LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No, 

ShellJtL:: 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN 




'• Do penance : for the kingdom of heaven is 
at hand.' 1 — Matth., Chap, ui, 2. 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN 



THE SAME BEING A 



Series of Conferences Spoken 



BY THE 



Rev. HENRY ALOYSIUS BARRY, 



w 



To the Nuns and the Public 

in the 

Carmelite Chapel in the City of Boston. 



Boston: 

ANGEL GUARDIAN PRESS, 

1897. 



A. 



'5 



Copyright, 1897, 
By REV. HENRY A. BARRY 



^K, 




* 

<i 

o 

a 

J 
x 



MiMl Obstat: 

J. B. HOGAN. 

Imprimatur : 

<% JOANNES JOSEPHUS ARCHIEPISCOPUS, 

Bostonicnsis. 



"If sin is so fatal, and hell is and must be so rigorous, 
awful, jet in repentance, too, is man purified. Repentance 
is the grand Christian act, . . . the whole mountain shakes 
with joy, and a psalm of praise rises when one soul has 
perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind." 
— Carlyle on Dante's T*urgatorio. 



WITH THE LOVE AND THE CONFIDENCE 

OF A 

CHILD OF MARY 

THE AUTHOR DEDICATES HIS CHILD'S-EFFORT 

TO 

OUR LADY OF MT. CARMEL. 



Soul. 

Dear Angel, say, 
Why have I now no fear at meeting Him ? 
Along my earthly life, the thought of death 
And judgment was to me most terrible. 
I had it aye before me, and I saw 
The Judge severe e'en in the Crucifix. 
Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled ; 
And at this balance of my destiny, 
Now close upon me, I can forward look 
With a serenest joy. 

Angel. 

It is because 
Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear. 
Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so 
For thee the bitterness of death is past. 
Also, because already in thy soul 
The judgment is begun. That day of do«m, 
One and the same for the collected world — 
That solemn consummation for all flesh, 
Is, in the case of each, anticipate 
Upon his death ; and, as the last great day 
I n the particular judgment is rehearsed, 
So now, too, ere thou comest to the Throne, 
A presage falls upon thee, as a ray 
Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot. 
That calm and joy uprising in thy soul 
Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense, 
And heaven begun. 

— Dream of Gerontius. 



PREFACE. 



Schoolmen, in the universities, do a valiant ser- 
vice, standing to the breastworks — first of all, 
keeping at bay the external enemies of our religion, 
afterwards winning them over to the standard of the 
Cross. The present volume, however, is designed 
for those, within. We, the children of Holy Mother 
Church, need the daily bread of life, with care lest 
our own souls perish, — not, perhaps, through the 
enemy's lances directed from without, by a broken 
faith — but, through neglect of the soul and starva- 
tion, within the very walls, by indifference, or a 
wicked life. If it be observed, that tension marks 
the speech, the author begs that the season, which 
inspired the words may hasten to his defence ; for, 
be it understood that Lent is a time when a loud call 
— 'sound a trumpet in Sion,' as the prophet says, — 
and a persistent one must be employed to stir up the 
drowsy faithful. 

Neither the low whisper of the lyre, nor the deli- 
cate note of the lute will pierce the din and tumult of 
the world's vast machinery and absorbing activities. 
Loud must sound the bugle's call, for, God's people 
have wandered afar. This volume, then, is an appeal 
to the heart ; an incentive to action, for ' cursed is 
everyone that continueth not in all things which are 
written in the book, to do them.' — (Gal. iii, 10.) 
' l For the rest, brethren, we pray and beseech you in 
the Lord Jesus, that as you have received from us 



how you ought to walk and to please God, so also 
you would walk that you may abound the more." 
(I. Thess. iv, i.) 

To insure fair results on all sides, the author 
strenuously recommends that the eleventh chapter of 
the volume shall be read throughout, or not at all ; 
for only by a thorough reading of it can the equili- 
brium of the chapter be adequately conserved and 
an evenly balanced judgment of the question made 
possible to the mind of the reader. 

The ecclesiastic law has its appointed times of 
penance. When these terms expire all ecclesiastic 
obligation subsides with them, whereas the divine 
virtue of penance urges at all times, and at no time 
w r holly ceases. 

As, moreover, the book contains the truth, it suits 
all times, since truth, not being subject to change, 
owns no seasons. We must be always about the 
things l that are of the Father ; ' we must ever be 
intent upon doing the ' one thing necessary ; ' for, 
fail in whatsoever else we will, let us, at any cost, 
save our immortal souls, redeemed by the blood of 
the Lord. Others may have this world, but give us 
the next. 

HENRY A. BARRY. 

Boston, April i, 1897. 



INDEX. 

Chapter I. 
Sinners in Israel , Pardoned yet Punished . 13 

Chapter II. 
Sackcloth and Ashes in the Earlier Ages of 
Christianity 42 

Chapter III. 
A Study in Penance 80 

Chapter IV. 
The Influence of Penance 108 

Chapter V. 
The Tragedy of Redemption 129 

Chapter VI. 
The Last Farthing 152 

Chapter VII. 
Man's Responsibility for His Sins . . . . 172 

Chapter VIII. 
God Wills the Salvation of the Whole World, 186 

Chapter IX. 
Danger of Personal Passiveness in Religion . 202 

Chapter X. 
Many are Called but Few are Chosen . . . 220 

Chapter XI. 
The Number of the Elect 240 

Chapter XII. 
Am I of the Chosen 261 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN 



CHAPTER I. 

SINNERS IN ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED, 

" Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand." With these words, the Master inaugur- 
ates His public ministry : This is the starting 
point; the first thing to be done: "Unless ye 
do penance ye shall all perish." God lays the 
corner-stone of religion in penance ; we hear our 
Lord telling us, we cannot be saved without it ; we 
hear the voice of the prophet above the fierce 
winds of the wilderness: " Prepare ye the way of 
the Lord." Again we hear it, as the prophet of 
the wilderness runs along the shores of the seas and 
the banks of the streams, in a voice, weird, 
resonant and awful, above the din of splash- 
ing torrents and the battle-roar of white-plumed 
waves : " Do penance ! do penance ! " Jesus and 
John preached to Israel ; but, now as of yore, the 
Word of God falls upon men's ears and dies 
away, like the waves, leaving us unchanged as the 
waters after a momentary agitation ; and yet, all 
the time, the wild and mournful wail of the lost 
souls breaks in upon our pensive moments, and 
the flames of hell light up our fancy as we read 



14 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

the awful fate, and hear the warning: " Unless 
ye do penance ye shall all perish" : — ye shall suf- 
fer as we; for, this is what it means, not to have 
done penance — to be consigned to everlasting 
torments : " Depart from Me ye cursed ; " " Unless 
ye do penance ye shall all perish." Yes, I hear 
the jeers of the world ; I hear their mocking 
'Hell !' 'Everlasting fire !' — 'pooh ! ' I hear the 
taunt: "Ye are deluded," 'morbid in your piety;' 
and, all this carping is because we strive to gain 
the kingdom of heaven and are earnest in our 
endeavor so to do, by attaining to the mastery of 
-our lower nature, and by the living in a manner 
at once pleasing to God, disastrous to our sensual 
nature, and disheartening to the enemies of our 
soul, within and without. Yes, they say, it is 
well with our nature ; it is healthy ; nature's 
antagonism to the soul — a trick of priestcraft ! 
Hell is a bugbear, a mere affair of a beguiled 
fancy ; and to sum up all, — we are saint-mad ! 

The daily violences, the momentary struggles, 
the sacrifices essential to salvation, are beyond the 
capacity for understanding of the carnal world, 
whose motto with more or less modification is, in- 
variably, and substantially : "Dum vtvtmus, viva- 
mus" — Whilst we live let us make merry for 
there is nothing more : Death is the final, deep 
sleep, whence there is no awakening. Still, for 
all the world's incredulousness, the kingdom of 
heaven suffers violence ; for, Christ's Word must 
stand : " Heaven and earth shall pass away but 
My Word shall not pass away." 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. I 5 

Many fail to understand penance in the plan of 
salvation. So, too, are there men who have no 
ear for music ; they cannot read a simple melody, 
and a symphony is to them a deep secret. To 
suchunspiritual ears penance means nothing but a 
discord. They do not catch its tone in the grand 
harmonious scale of redemption, because they have 
not the ear. They say, someone is singing out of 
tune. The world, I repeat, does not understand 
penance. If you practise it, you must do so, 
alone. You must not follow the crowd : you 
must part with the 'many,' who tread the broad 
way, and take to the brambled ' narrow 
way/ apart, which only the ' few ' know. We all 
need penance, because we have sinned : " Fast," 
says the saint with tongue of gold, ''because you 
have sinned." Let him that is without sin cast 
the first stone at penance. But the genius of Phari- 
seeism is not extinct ; we find a shade of it in the 
studied but false gravity of the prick-eared Puri- 
tan : the affected, calm, ashen face, and gaunt 
wasted form, are in our midst — 'whitened sepul- 
chres !' But their outward appearances are the 
result of the hidden enormities of their hearts, or of 
the seething ambitions and shocking pride, which, 
though hidden from themselves, none the less 
effectually consume them. They seem to 
have struck the high C of piety, but it is all with- 
out. The note is forced and unnatural ; the voice 
is falsetto. Within, lie buried their sins, but not 
destroyed, nor concealed from God's view, 
though, so, from their own clouded eyes. How 



1 6 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

appalling ! Self-pleased, self-distinguished from 
their fellows, unlike the ' rest of men, ' they ask : 
"What have we done ?" and the query rankles in our 
bosoms and grates on our ears, at the very 
moment when our eyes are observing the words 
of St. John: "And if we say we have not sinned 
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 
At last, then, we seize upon the purpose of St. 
John and grasp the import of his words, and the 
kind of men to which he alluded when he spoke 
these words. He levelled them at the hypocrite, 
who fancies himself sinless and unsinable. 

"Who amongst you shall charge Me with sin?" 
Methought the Master alone could own such words ; 
but, the Pharisee usurps the Master's words, and 
asks us confidently what he has done or would have 
done, or could have done, that he should have to do 
penance. Perhaps penance is vulgar and only for 
beginners, not for the advanced class. Let the 
Pharisee's own word stand for our verdict on his 
prodigious temerity : the same words he shall 
speak later on of the Saviour before the Master's 
judges: "The man blasphemeth." Upon all 
such as have but once sinned the duty of penance 
is incumbent. So, then, Lent is meant for you and 
for me — ' the rest of men,' sinners like David 
and Peter, — thank God, not Pharisees, spin-texts 
and roundheads, who court the letter of the Gos- 
pel, and carry the Bible hanging from their arm- 
pits ; who shun the spirit of Christ, and to whom 
the divine and inner meaning of revelation has 
not been made known, as to the ' little ones.' 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 1 7 

To a sensuous generation the trumpet-flourish 
of Mother Church, summoning the nations of the 
world to pause and reflect; her prophetic tongue 
crying out in the cities, towns, villages and ham- 
lets of Sion, with the solemn authority of Jesus 
Christ, calling Israel to their tents to fast and 
pray — to the immoral and unbelieving world, I 
say, the Church, announcing the approach of 
Lent, is a herald of tidings that are sad. Mem- 
ories of fine flavors haunt the palate, and the 
odors of insipid fish come up to them as the rules 
of Lent are read out from the pulpit, saddening 
their poor nature with the idea of sacrifice to their 
sensuous tastes, and of retrenchments not sooth- 
ing after a season of revelry and liberty. Thabor 
is vastly more agreeable than Calvary. 

We have enjoyed the delights of the world, and 
we exclaim, in the spirit of Peter, James and John : 
"It is good for us to be here." They caught 
the foregleams of heavenly glory on Thabor : they 
would fain tarry there and build them tabernacles, 
and live and serve far from the way of the cross. 
We, too, have tasted the world's pleasures, though 
not altogether guilty, and, so, we say, I repeat, 
' It is good for us to be here.' We would linger 
to serve the world in our sensuous ease ; but, the 
Son of Man clothed in glory on Thabor is the Child 
of Destiny : " This Child is set up for the rise and 
fall of many in Israel." Signals are already set 
above the trees at Olivet, on the ramparts and 
turrets of the distant praetorium, — on Calvary. 
He, the great Prophet, alone can read them. The 



1 8 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

will of the Father beckons Him on. The way 
of the cross, gloomy and bloody, stretches itself 
out before Him — "My hour is not yet come" — for 
glory ; "Arise, let us go hence." As He descends 
Thabor's grassy slope, methinks He renewed His 
vows: "Behold I come to do Thy will." 

Like the youth to whom our Lord laid down 
the conditions of Christian perfection, men want 
to be saved ; but, grumble over the means of at- 
taining to that happy end ; they want to enjoy the 
promises of Christ, and they haggle over the 
conditions ; they argue on the price. They want to 
be saved, but they do not want penance. They 
want the end, but they do not want the means. 

God's altars are hung round with sombre 
draperies ; the purple vestments of the priest im- 
press us with the character of the season ; the 
bright colors of the glorified saints, the golden, 
the white, the purple and the ruby, become ob- 
trusive, and are, for the most part, laid away. 
The huge black cloud of penance, which ex- 
tinguishes the lights of the social world, renders 
the soul in a sense sad and pensive. Some are 
deaf as the very stones to the summons of the 
Lord, but the serious soul has opened its ears to the 
prophet's voice : " Unless ye do penance for your 
sins ye shall perish all." Do penance, or perish! 
This is a hard word ; but, it is thrice harder to hear 
the words: "Depart from Me ye cursed into 
everlasting fire." We must heed the one or the 
other ; we cannot contemn the two. If the soul 
has heard the prophet's voice ; if we are not deaf 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. IC> 

to the call of the Lord, we are with Christ in the 
desert. At length the holy season arrives, the soul 
has heard the prophet's voice : "Unless ye dc* 
penance ye cannot be saved." The sounds of 
revelry and garrulous wassail, the chitter-chatter,. 
the gossip and brilliant nothings of social events 
have been hushed ; for, it is only by retiring for a 
time from the noise, the vanity, and revelry of the 
world, that we may be truly said to be with Christ 
in a solitude. " I will lead her into the wilder- 
ness, and there I shall speak to her heart." The 
feast of Cana is over, and, alas, there were found 
more at the festive-board on the wedding day than 
are found by the Master's side in His agony. 

" Solitude," says Lenau, "is the Mother of God 
in man;" it is the "flight of the alone to the 
Alone ;" " it is the essence of joy in piety," says 
Plotinus. " But," you say, "you would not have 
us who are called to live in the world become 
solitaries?" No, I confess, you are not, indeed,, 
commanded nor asked to abandon the fireside, 
or office-desk, or sales-counter, to wend your 
way, apart, to a hermitage on the prairie ; or to 
the mountain-caves of the Rockies or Sierras, 
like Anthony and Paul, or even to bury yourself 
in the living tomb of the cloistered monastery, 
were it even for a few days ; though, it would not 
be incongruous nor unhealthful to observe how 
silent is the cemetery — that monastery of the 
dead ; how noiseless are its gravelled and un- 
roofed corridors ; and how secluded and silent the 
little cells in the earth where eternity will find us, 



20 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

willing or no, monks in death, — communing with 
our God, I hope, but cannot surely say — and, 
perhaps, regretting our past dislike and dis- 
inclination to any portion of true solitude, saying, 
with the fullest power and deepest sigh of our 
soul, the words of Augustine: "Lord, how late I 
have loved Thee." 

The solitude of Lent, for you, shall consist in 
the substitution of a prevailing spirit of religious- 
ness and more earnest devotion to your eternal 
interests, for the pleasure-seeking passion that 
rules your life throughout other seasons ; and for 
your warm pursuit after the pleasures of this 
world. Yours may be, though a lesser one, 
still, a solitude, when you shut out from your 
life dissipations and distractions that hinder the 
solemn thought that pervades the Church of 
God when the whole Christian world is in retreat. 
* 'Remember, man, for dust thou art, and unto 
dust thou shalt return." You will not go into 
solitude, but you may bring the solitude to you. 
Say then to all your distracting amusements what 
the Lord said to His friends, whose talk, harmless 
at other times, distracts Him now : "Tarry ye here 
whilst I go yonder and pray." Under such con- 
ditions the heart of God and the heart of man are 
brought together. God has something to say to 
each of us when He beckons us, apart, from the 
dusty highway to the woodland path ; He has 
something to say to us in private : "I will lead her 
into solitude and there I shall speak to her heart," 
says God to the soul. If, indeed, the sun of the 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 21 

social world is eclipsed, and a midnight silence 
broods over the carnal world ; if we retire, indeed, 
from the life that is without to the truer one that 
is within the soul, by shutting out the external 
light, we shall see all the better the light that is 
within. The Holy Spirit will, as it were, over- 
shadow us. 

Silence ! solitude ! reflection ! — this is not a wel- 
come work for the multitudes. Few men would 
seize a lantern and walk into a cemetery at dark 
night, alone, and, entering the lonely tomb, re- 
lease the rusty, clanking chain from the great, 
gloomy iron gate, push back its ponderous 
bolt, and approaching, raise the lid of the casket 
and behold the white face of the dead man, though 
it be that of a friend, a brother, or a father. The 
souls of many men are wrapt in the black folds of 
a worse than mortal death. What is the white 
face of the dead man, his hollowed cheeks, from 
which the skin has receded ; the prominent teeth, 
and empty eye-wells? The bodies of so many 
men as live in sin are but as moving sepulchres : 
their souls are rigid, cold, and damp in death, 
within the world's vast charnel-house. Yes, men 
will find it hard to go into a spirit of reflection, 
accept the lesser solitude of the mission, and 
observe the retirement of the Lent. This is going 
into the grave-yard, entering the tomb, unscrewing 
and raising the lid of the coffin, and gazing in 
upon the features of one's own dead soul ; yet, 
if you will do it, the sight will rouse you from your 
torpor or death to Christian life and perfection. 



22 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

It will sanctify you like the crumbling remains of 
Isabella moved Francis Borgia to love God with 
all his heart and soul, to the very highest pitch of 
human endeavor. Meditation and self-examina 
tion is a solitude of the soul. 

The unbelieving world, I repeat, does not, or 
affects not to, comprehend penance — 'A morbid 
doctrine ! ' they say ; " quite out of tune with all 
humanity and reason ! ' Rabid worldlings and 
radical naturalists cry out : Suicide ! But these 
men do not take into account the fundamental 
fact that human nature is fallen and radically out 
of joint. Yes, alack, the instrument of our poor, 
frail, delicate nature, fell once from the grasp of 
Adam and was broken. Christ, Who could alone 
do it, as being God, has restored the lost chord, 
and put together the broken pieces and severed 
parts of the instrument of our nature. Benighted 
sectarians and wilful agnostics repudiate the new- 
economy of Christ. They have not the true Faith. 
A chord is wanting to their soul, and their harps 
cannot interpret the divine harmonies of our ven- 
erable religion. 

The genius of penance is justice : " Render to 
God the things that are God's." A pious fear of 
that justice, which should dwell in the hearts of 
all virtuous men, finds expression in penance ; 
"Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord." A 
key to the understanding of penance is found when 
we shall have grasped the truth that God is just. 
When offended, the wrath of God is withering as the 
dry north-wind . ' 'Who kno weth the power of Thy 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 2J 

anger and for Thy fear can number Thy wrath ! " 
Keep, then, before your mind's eye, the word of 
the Church in her third Nocturn of October:: 
Her apostrophe to God: " Creator of all things,. 
God terrible and mighty, just and merciful." If 
you offend God, fancying He loves you too much 
to punish ; oh, what an insult to His justice t 
Fie! vapid but perilous fancy: Out upon your 
modern conceit ! Shame upon your affected 
humanitarianism ! — He cannot punish ! He will 
punish ; He must punish. Much indeed as God 
is merciful, He is still under obligations to His 
own justice to punish the sinner. His mercy can- 
not defeat, nor will it try to defeat the hand of 
justice. Let no man trifle, then, with God, and 
fancy to himself that he can sin, aye, or take from 
the forbidden tree one particle of fruit, a bud, a 
leaf, and say: "I defy Thy justice; "or, "I challenge 
Thy mercy ; Thy love will and must withstand 
Thee and Thy justice !" What mad, blasphemous 
sport it is making with the terrible attributes of the 
Divinity ; what insolent familiarity and boldness it 
is to take God so flippantly and trivially ; to 
harlequin His perfections, and turn the God of truth 
into a make-off God. "In whatsoever day thou 
shalt sin thou shalt die the death." This vow of 
satisfaction condemns the dreadful thought that 
justice will be frustrated by love. God says He 
will punish sin; God keeps His promises. We 
are free as the mountain air to sin or not to sin :, 
but, if we sin, God will punish us. God is not 
free not to punish when we shall have sinned. 



24 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Let us go to the first vespers of the apostles 
assigned by the Church for the office of her priests. 
Psalm ex. speaks the whole truth, clearly, indis- 
putably, and infallibly: " His justice remaineth 
forever and ever." We pass on and new thoughts 
arise and occupy us, until we reach Psalm cxi. 
and lo ! again the same words we find in the third 
verse: "Glory and riches are in His house, and 
His justice remaineth forever and ever." We read 
on and in the same psalm we are confronted by 
testimonies bearing on the wondrous kindness of 
God to the poor and the lowly; but, lest we for- 
get the previous idea of His justice, or lest it be 
lost in the medley, or outshone in the group of 
God's marvellous attributes, of His splendors and 
munificence, between the praises of His gener- 
osity, power, beauty, and the dazzling brilliancy 
of His glory, the prophet's voice recalls and re- 
peats the terrible truth: " His justice remaineth 
forever and ever." The justice of God is as old 
as His love. It shall live as long, unchanging and 
imperishable. The brilliant pageantry of the 
divine attributes march before our fancy as David 
marshals them to the sounds of psalm and timbrel, 
of psaltery and harp in his inspired muse (Psalm 
lxxx.) His song now excites us, lifts us up, 
thrills us with joy and hope, and in a twinkle he 
touches the chord of justice, — sounds the timbrel, 
and the ruby color of our hopeful countenance 
deepens to carnation, and fades away to paleness ; 
a tremulousness comes upon us, a fear creeps 
over us ; the soul is stirred, and vibrates with fear, 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 25 

when he tells Israel how just God is ; how loving, 
and yet how terrible ! 

"Sing we to the Lord a new canticle: because 
He hath done wonderful things. His right hand 
hath wrought for Him salvation, and His arm is 
holy." Yet under the empire of Jesus Christ, jus- 
tice must be respected. " The Lord hath made 
known the salvation, and hath revealed His justice 
in the sight of the Gentiles." (Psalm xcvii.) The 
understanding of penance means a trembling, a 
fear lest we offend Almighty God, and by our 
offences bring down upon our heads Divine chas- 
tisement to match them. The prophet has it: 
" The mountains tremble and they smoke in His 
presence, and the very fibres of the deep quiver and 
proclaim that the God of Nature is in anger." 

Since the coming of our Lord, Israel sings a new 
canticle: "Let us praise the Lord because His 
mercy is brought down upon us ; " but, let us, at 
our peril, still remember the low, deep tone of the 
versicle, constant as the swell of the mighty deep : 
" His justice abideth forever and ever." In what- 
soever accents the Church may sing of hope, 
of joy, of admiration, beneath every canticle 
the chord of His justice rolls out for a basis of 
true harmony. Since the Incarnation of our 
Divine Lord, Peace and Justice have embraced 
and kissed ; they are friends. Mercy and Justice 
are not enemies, and Mercy will never dethrone 
Justice. Let then the fear of God find always a 
dwelling with us. Hope in God without fear is 
spurious virtue. On the other hand, our very 



26 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

fear must be accompanied and qualified by hope, 
to be wise and true virtue. Listen to Peter: 
4i Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." 
This was intemperate fear ; one which needed a 
dash of hope ; for, so the Master clearly said : " Do 
not fear," that is, do not fear too much ; do not 
fear without hoping. David, like Peter, felt the 
burden of his miseries : " My iniquities are gone 
over my head." — "I am become miserable and 
am bowed down even to the end." — "I am 
afflicted and humbled exceedingly." — " I roared 
with the groanings of my heart." But, after hav- 
ing numbered the vast array of his afflictions, hope 
still abided with him and never forsook his side. 
"In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped." Forsake me 
not, O Lord. " From the morning watch even 
until night, let Israel hope in the Lord." Fear 
without hope is despair. This was the sin of 
Judas. He feared God's wrath to be visited down 
upon his treason. He lost hope in mercy and 
perished. Fear with hope means salvation, but it 
is not well to hope at the expense of our fear : 
" Work out your salvation with fear and trem- 
bling." In religion, give everything its proper 
value and just proportion: "No man knoweth 
whether he be worthy of hatred or love." The 
angels are not pure in the sight of God. If we 
were to bring in before the altar to-day the body 
of a Francis or a Teresa, the minister of God's 
Church would be constrained to read over it the 
words of the Church: " Enter not into judgment 
with Thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight no 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 27 

man shall be found just." This tremendous word 
holds for all men. The fierce confession it makes 
is true. So infinite is the purity and holiness of 
God that for each offence against that sanctity, 
justice will insist on the full measure of reparation 
and atonement : " An eye for an eye, a tooth for 
a tooth " — for murder and the idle word. 

Yes, sin is an injustice. " I have acknowledged 
my sins to Thee and my sin is an injustice." " I 
have acknowledged my sins to Thee and my in- 
justice I have not concealed." (Psalm xxxi.) 
" Blessed is the man to whom the Lord hath not 
imputed sin." But who is such, and where is he, 
prithee ? " No man knows whether he be worthy 
of hatred or love." Shall you or I say : " I owe 
nothing to God's justice.'' Every man who 
breathes may yet be saved. Fear God's justice 
now in time. The damned fear it and tremble 
beneath its wrath, but it is too late to profit them. 
Fear in time eventuates in hope, and ripens into 
salvation. The fear of God, from which salvation 
is born, must in its turn have been born in time. 
Fear God now; mercy rules to-day. After this life 
* justice remains forever and ever.' There is no 
further mercy once we are lost: "It is decreed 
for man once to die and after death, judgment." 
Why go beyond the one fact that hell was created 
by justice; and if Justice were to take her course 
untempered by mercy we would, and might well, 
despair; and, oh, what must be the tortures of 
hell, where justice is in its full blaze, and whose 
awful fires shall gleam with a madding constancy. 



28 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

The thief, the murderer, the incendiary, the har- 
lot, and all such, serve out their full sentence^ 
work out atonement before society, and cancel all 
indebtedness to the laws of the state ; but, the 
sinner must reckon with a higher justice and a 
sterner one ; a keener and a stricter judge, a 
higher, a nobler and an eternal law. The sinner 
must stand before a judge who sees the inward 
guilt in the piercing rays of His august holiness. 

By our voluntary and free choice we may serve 
out a moral sentence by penance, — less indeed 
than the smallest fraction of our dues ; but, volun- 
tary and sanctioned of God, — and be pardoned 
of all we owe to God and to the Divine law. What 
shall it be ? Penance, whilst pardon is obtainable ; 
or, shall we serve out in a life without end a sen- 
tence hereafter, where pardon is impossible : "De- 
part from Me ye cursed into everlasting fire." We 
may catch a gleam of the wrath of God and snatch 
a faint idea of the punishment which justice allots 
to sinners, from the events that took place before 
the coming of the adorable Victim Whom the 
Father was to offer up for the sins of the world. 

Sad and terrible was the fate of the angels. 
Gems of dazzling brilliancy set in the crown of 
God to attest His sovereignty, they fell from 
their setting, 'for the mighty are laid waste' 
(Zachary ii, 20.) Jewels they are still, but set 
in the robe of Justice, and it is their very brilliancy 
that makes hell so brilliant a flame. Mighty in- 
telligences, noblest in character of all God's creat- 
ures, the angels sinned but once. Without pity, 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 2CJ» 

and without offering any opportunity for pardon, 
God smote them. "He sinned against a God 
Who did not call him to repentance," says St.- 
Bonaventure, referring to Lucifer. Lost forever!' 
If the Son of God had offered Himself as a victim 
for the angels, there would have been hope for 
them. As it is, our repentance will secure eter- 
nal pardon, but only because Christ has died for 
us. Lost, I say, damned, — the angels ! "Proud: 
spirits," says Bossuet, "without losing your sub- 
lime intelligence, God has turned it against your 
own hearts, as an instrument of punishment. 
Everything bright and glorious in you is trans- 
formed into evil. Your intellects that shone like 
the stars of the morning have become the agents 
of duplicity and guile." 

Brethren, pause and reflect. The example of 
the angels was wholly lost on Adam. Our uni- 
versal sire, and root of the whole human family, 
sinned, likewise, against his God. According to 
the compact between God and Adam, such an 
event would be followed by a lasting perdition : 
"On whatsoever day thou shalt sin thou shalt die 
the death." The crime of our common father has 
been condoned and forgiven, but it has not been 
let go all unpunished. The concerted sorrows 
of mankind are a portion of the penalty affixed 
to that sin, and they are a reflection of Adam's 
own punishment. The insult, I say, has been con- 
doned, but the punishment has been commuted 
from eternal to temporal punishment ; it has not 
been entirely abrogated. The original sentence, 

B 



36 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

decreeing lasting death, has been revoked, say 
rather, compromised ; the temporal death stands : 
"As by one man sin hath entered into the world, and 
by sin death, so death passed upon all men in whom 
all have sinned." The mercy of God, beloved by 
Him, as an attribute of Himself, pleads with soft, 
motherly face, and moves, indeed, God's justice to 
relax its awful rigidness. Pardon, I say, ensues ; 
— grace and reconciliation ; but Justice has not 
surrendered all. Our Lord is the embodiment of 
mercy. He paid the price for us: "You are 
bought with a great price," says St. Paul. 

Freely man erred ; freely must he retrieve his 
error. Justice demands satisfaction of us. Side 
by side with the redemption in the common mis- 
ery and pain of humanity, man trudges along 
bearing his cross, weeping and groaning, rising 
and falling ; an exile, a sufferer, a penitent. No, 
the life that is 'one grand, sweet song,' is not the 
Christian life that leads to immortality. — "Blessed 
are they that mourn." The footprints of the 
Saviour are not found on beds of flowers ; their 
shapely outline and adorable impression are not 
discovered on the petals of roses ; but on the 
stubbled heath, and the barnacled rock, and the 
pebbled shore. Even to-day we are forgiven our 
sins in the Sacrament of Penance, but it is only 
with contrition and confession joined to satisfac- 
tion that we may profit by this sacrament and 
have applied to us the merits of Christ's death. 

The wrath of God claimed four-and-twenty 
thousand men of Israel because they had sinned 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 3 I 

with the daughters of Moab. Moses was the 
tongue of God on that occasion, when he cried 
out: "Let every man kill his neighbors that have 
been initiated to Beelphegor." (Num. xxv.) Again 
God was angry because Saul had slain the Gabaon- 
ites, to whom friendship had been pledged. His 
anger put on the form of a famine in the days of 
David, which lasted three years. Justice did not 
lose sight of the past sin, as yet unpunished ; it 
clamored for atonement; it was debt as yet unpaid 
to God. Man forgets, but God remembers. Jus- 
tice obtained, when the seven survivors of Saul's 
race were crucified — ' and these seven died to- 
gether on the first days of the harvest, when the 
barley began to be reaped.' Justice, inexorable, 
demanded the sacrifice — and, oh, how keen ! — at 
that hour when the song of the harvesters and the 
music of the scythe made it hard to part with the 
earth ; when the soft croon of the maidens, gather- 
ing the sheaves, mingled with the low tones of the 
sturdy yeomen, beating time with the blade ; at 
the flood-tide of gaiety when Plenty brightened up 
the scenes of life, and made it hard on them to 
part with it. 

The offense of David in reckoning up the num- 
ber of His people was one of pride : God refused 
to let the sin pass unpunished : " I am on every 
side in a great strait," said the king. Three 
punishments were left open to him. He could 
merely choose one of these ; but, one of these he 
must choose. Here we might profit largely by 
observing the fact that David made acknowl- 



32 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

edgment of the mercy of God, and threw himself 
upon it; and, still, God punished him: "It is 
better for me to fall into the hands of the Lord, 
for His mercies are many, than into the hands of 
men," said he. Did this grand piety and most touch- 
ing submissiveness to God dissuade God from 
vengeance upon the prophet's sin? No : "So the 
Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there fell 
of Israel seventy thousand men." (I Par. xxi. 14.) 
When commanded to smite the rock for water, 
they smote not once alone, but twice ; and because 
of their incredulous hesitancy, Moses and his 
brother Aaron were soon made to feel the sting 
of God's displeasure and chagrin. Both were 
punished by preclusion from the Promised Land. 
Aaron, to boot, is unpriested. But why pause to 
mark the penalty of Moses ? Ah, grand and pathetic 
is the spectacle of the patriarch who faithfully and 
unerringly had led the children of Israel through 
many a perilous path from Egyptian bondage to 
freedom ; through the desert of sin and hostile 
camps, surmounting by his magnificent faith the 
obstacles flung upon his way by a fickle and sediti- 
ous people, resignedly beholding the crown of 
triumph glistening on the temples of another, — 
Joshua. The venerable liberator stands upon the 
summit of Mount Nebo, shades his aged eyes with 
a paisied hand, and views the palm trees nodding 
in distant Jericho ; scans the sky line, focuses the 
graceful undulations, and moves the eye along,, 
with searching look, the threads of sparkling 
silver that interlace hill and dell, revealing the 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 33 

streams of milk and honey that flow through its 
lovely plains. Why does he not enjoy the 
triumph of his labors? Why shall he not hear 
the canticle of joy, the paean of exultation, sung 
amid the burning fires, whence fragrant clouds 
curl heavenward from a thousand altars? Why 
does he depart from life on the very threshold of 
his triumph, and his body be suffered to vanish 
like a phantom with no earthly mourner to shed 
a tear over his ashes? It is his punishment for 
one sin. "What," say you, "is such a penalty to 
many another — as a violent death ?" But, consider- 
ing man's inborn pride, it is easier to die than 
to see another wear the crown that we 
have spent our life and best energies in weaving. 
It is sore trying after our toil of ploughing and 
sowing and husbanding in the hot summer's sun, 
to see another step in, when autumn comes, to 
gather the sheaves and garner the harvest — reap- 
ing the glory of our labor. Methinks, the human 
side of the patriarch would assert itself. I fancy 
the prophet's noble breast expanding, and his 
heart rising up in emotion ; but, again, I see the 
piety of the man conquering the rebellious human 
spirit that was within him : I fancy his swollen 
heart subsiding, his eyes turning meekly to heaven, 
his feeble lips moving in blessing, giving thanks 
to God, and in adoration of the sovereign will. 
In his punishment and disgrace, he still clings to 
God with an unmixed love and devotion. 

The virtuous life of Moses, with a tracery of his 
manifold works, as law-maker and liberator of his 



34 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

people, would stand as a monument, lasting as 
time and towering high above the souvenirs of 
saints that have come and gone ; but the childlike 
simplicity and the humble resignation of the 
valiant leader and holy patriarch surrendering to 
God the full blazing glory of his earthly triumph, 
is the golden chapter of his splendid life, and lifts 
to his memory a shaft of pure white marble, such 
as we would raise above the ashes of the child, 
and which tells the simple story — a child is dead ! 
Moses was a prophet, statesman, and patriarch, 
but what are these gifts save as a means ? What 
are they to that greater gift to which they ought 
to lead? Ah yes, Moses was above all a child of 
God, — a saint : ' ' Unless ye be as one of these little 
ones ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." 
It is ever so with saints. We find them simple 
as children with God and with man. They are 
not made double by a double world. Always 
humble, whether in grace or in disgrace ; sweetly 
resigned, and never questioning the decrees, sweet 
or stern, of Love or Justice. If indeed they have 
prudence — which the Lord counsels — it is one 
that finds its root in true wisdom, that does not ex- 
clude any love of God, or any fraction of the most 
glowing charity toward their neighbor. Their love 
is orderly. It is not for the saint to be industri- 
ously astute, the so-called shrewd and worldly- 
wise. The only suspicion a saint may have is 
that of his own moral infirmity, or of the devil. 
" Cleanse your hands ye sinners, and purify your 
hearts, ye double-minded." (St. James iv.) 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 35 

The sweet simplicity of Moses ! The worldly- 
wise would say his lot had been a failure : Cruel 
men would gibe him, as they did Job : Good men 
would merely pity him ; but the Eternal God 
loved this simple child of faith. Do we discover 
by the light of such a noble example in our own 
lives the punishments for our sins left unatoned 
and unrepented? Do not look for these so much 
in the massacre of the thousands, or in the great 
catastrophes of life, as in the personal miseries, 
and hourly contradictions, humiliations, and mis- 
carriages of your ambitions, and the frustrations 
of your purposes. Yield your pride before God's 
design, and your penance will have a true charac- 
ter : " Be afflicted and mourn and weep : let your 
laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy 
into sorrow. Be humble in the sight of the Lord 
and He will exalt you." (St. James iv.) Moses 
did a great penance. 

Distracted with the beauty of a woman, David 
drew to his sinful bosom Bethsebee, the wife 
of another. To his sin of lust he added that of 
murder, when he purposely involved the life of 
Urias, the woman's lawful husband. The prophet 
Nathan charges the king with his sin in the 
charming and touching parable of the ewe-lamb. 
David then and there makes full confession of his 
guilt: "I have sinned against the Lord." As is 
always the case, a frank acknowledgment of our 
sins, even to ourselves, in the presence of God 
disposes God toward us. God pardoned David ; 
— " God hath taken away the sin," answers 



36 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Nathan. How then; is all over? No. David is 
forgiven, through the mercy of God ; he is par- 
doned ; but, a temporal punishment remains due to 
his sin. This penalty David paid in the disgrace 
brought to his door, somewhat after the fashion of 
his own sin, by Absalom, his son, who, before all 
Israel commits shamelessly his deed of lust with 
the concubine of his royal sire, and supplements 
his folly by fomenting rebellion against the very 
throne of his father. God demanded the life of 
the child which Bethsebee bore to David in 
atonement for the scandal of his sin. The thirst 
of Justice was not fully slaked till the temporal 
punishment of the royal penitent had been rounded 
off by the assassination of his vagabond son, and 
the last mourning tear of a father's tortured love 
had been dried upon his cheek. 

In the sixth chapter of Genesis, we find the 
record of the Deluge. Immense volumes of 
water were poured upon the earth. How 
terrible is God's wrath, when we look upon this 
as a cataract of tears God was shedding for having 
created the world: "It repented Him that He 
had made man on the earth, and being touched 
inwardly with sorrow of heart, He said : I will 
destroy man whom I have created from the face 
of the earth, even to beasts, from creeping things 
even to the fowls of the air, for it repenteth Me 
that I made them." Yes, God looked out upon 
the corruption of the world and the enormities of 
human lives, that provoked the deluge of His 
wrath. 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 37 

The sins of Sodom and Gomorrha had out- 
grown patience in the hideousness of their charac- 
ter. The malice of these twin-cities had outrun the 
natural speed of evil, and they had recourse in their 
delirium of perverseness to the invention of new 
fashions in vice, that debased man's very nature. 
A flood of water will not answer the purpose of 
God's wrath with such iniquities, adequately. 
Death by the Deluge had been merely death, — 
the simple privation of life. Now, a cataract of 
burning flames, and an avalanche of boiling 
brimstone, rained down upon the luckless cities, 
and not a human being, but Lot and his family, 
who had been warned to seek refuge, nor beast, 
nor insect, nor flower, survived the awful visita- 
tion. Such a death was more than mere death — 
it was torture whilst dying. But the penalty was 
commensurate with the ribald and depraved 
character of the sins that brought it on. Lot's 
wife looked behind her in her flight from the 
doomed city. God was displeased with her 
curiosity and angered by her disobedience. She 
sinned, and in punishment thereof, God metamor- 
phosed her into a pillar of salt. In the first book 
of Paralipomenon, a scene is depicted of the 
children of Israel, wherein they are bearing in 
reverent and devout procession the ark of God 
from the house of Aminidab. The ark leaned in 
the ox-cart upon which it rested, when, Oza put 
forth his hand to straighten it and was struck 
dead by the Almighty for his bold zeal, in touch- 
ing with unpriestly hand the tabernacle of the 



3$ AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Most High. Oza's zeal sprang from his love and 
devotion, but he practised his piety at the ex- 
pense of his fear and awe of the Most High. He 
paid the penalty of his indiscretion. 

In punishment of his iniquities, but especially 
whereas he had committed the folly of consulting 
a witch, God ended the days of Saul in violence, 
and passed over his kingdom to David. Deuter- 
onomy is alive with the evidences of both bless- 
ings and curses ; the former held out to those 
who shall have observed the precepts and cere- 
monies ; the latter promised with emphasis to 
those who shall have defied God and disobeyed 
His laws. The power of a just man to save a 
city from the hands of an angry God, as in the 
case of Lot, is not an unmixed source of hope and 
joy, for God has a corresponding loathing for the 
wicked man. From, then, the blessings, that God 
bestows so unsparingly, so unlimitedly, on the just 
man, we may learn and measure the curses and 
the punishments He conserves in His bosom for 
the day of wrath and retribution: " Make haste 
and be saved there, because I cannot do anything 
till thou go in thither," said God to Lot. 

Indeed, if all the saintly men who now inhabit 
the earth were to leave it, how long would God 
endure this world of ours. But, the Church of 
God must endure till the end of the world, as the 
Lord promised. The Church must be holy. This 
is her prerogative, and a mark of her genuineness. 
Accordingly, holy men must always be, more or 
less, so that God will preserve the world for the 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 39 

sake of these ; and yet, how would we have saintly 
men and women, and how could God bear with 
the evil of mankind, but for the copious stream of 
Our Lord's most precious Blood, shed in penance 
for the world, and daily flowing from our altars 
from the ' rising of the sun to the setting of the 
same,' to purify and sanctify these men and 
women : and that the sacrifice of the Son assuages 
and placates the wrath of the Father. 

But now, as ever before, penance must be 
achieved when sin has been committed. The 
Ninevites accepted their penance and were saved. 
David fasted for his follies ; and so did all the 
saints of the old law. How is it with some of 
us? When we were youths, brought up in the 
fear of God, a good conscience, trained in the 
principles of faith, made us tremble at the shadow 
of a wrong: We expected a punishment from 
God for every sin. We had that nice conscience 
alluded to when the poet said: "Conscience 
makes cowards of us all." How have you changed 
in all this? Have you still those virtuous fears? 
Do visions of the Deluge and the fate of Sodom 
haunt you at night? Do you not forget your 
mother's sweet voice when she said, ' God will 
punish you if you are naughty, my child.' Thank 
God, we believed her then: would to God we 
had never shifted our confidence to a false and 
lying world. When you are before the tabernacle, 
do you now think of Oza and the ark to inspire 
you with respect and dread of God's sovereign 
presence? Alas, in one word, do you not think 



40 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

that sin is not so great an evil, is not so displeas- 
ing to God, as you thought, and once really 
knew. Do you not fancy that God does not after 
all detest and abominate sin ; do you not fancy 
that He will not punish evil now as He once did 
in the olden days? Ah, no, do not be deluded: 
God is not yet inured to evil ; its character does 
not diminish in loathsomeness to Him. Man 
hardens himself to it : man gets inured to it ; 
man grows not to mind it so much ; but God, no ! 
God never changes toward it. Is God not as 
just and holy as of old? " I am the Lord, and I 
change not." (Mai. iii. 6.) The same God who 
punished the sinners of old, will punish us. Oh, 
let us fear His wrath ; let us, indeed, understand 
the awfulness and the majesty of God, and 
remember faithfully that though He pardons, He 
must punish every sin committed. Let us realize 
also that in His sovereign memory no sin evades 
His eye. I repeat it ; that the fear of God and of 
His justice abide with us ! He is indeed merciful 
and will forgive. But take, brethren, the punish- 
ment into your own hands, while there is time : 
Do penance. 

A ' contrite heart He will not despise ' and He 
' loveth the broken spirit.' Let us then, say, with 
the prophet: "My God, how dreadful is Thy 
wrath and who can withstand it ; " and the voice 
of the Lord shall come back from the scenes 
where once He stood and preached, where 
once His beautiful, melodious voice floated out 
above the great thousands who came to drink 



ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 4 1 

from the fountain of His lips the words of eternal 
life, saying: "Do penance " and "The kingdom 
of heaven is at hand." 



CHAPTER II. 

SACKCLOTH AND ASHES IN THE EARLIER AGES OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

It has been said that the art of mixing colors is 
numbered among the lost arts. There is an ele- 
ment wanting to our painters, which they have 
not yet discovered ; that lies buried in the ages of 
the past. Like the mummies of Thebes, the art 
of embalming lies mute with the Egyptians in 
their sepulchres. There is one element practically 
lost out of the Christian religion, and yet it is 
adulteration that explains the failure of modern 
paint. Nature has not changed. She has her 
wealth, and yields it always. The elements of 
Christian sanctity are at hand, as Christ bestowed 
them on the world as means to reproduce His 
image in ourselves by the brush of human liberty, 
and the opportunities for Christian actions offered 
us daily. One of these elements is wanting in prac- 
tice to-day, or, is admitted in wholly inadequate 
proportion: This element is penance. It is not 
obsolete in the teaching of the Church : the art 
of holiness is not lost, nor buried with Jesus in 
the silent tomb : "My Word shall not pass away." 
He has commissioned masters like Himself, only 
human, to teach the world in all ages, 'whatsoever 
He has taught them, to the consummation of the 
world,' so that the art of sanctity would never 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 



43 



change, like men and manners, and should never 
be lost; but, as 'many grapple with the Scrip- 
tures to their own destruction,' I am helped out 
by these words in my assertion, namely, that the 
art of sanctity is practically a lost one. Men 
adulterate the teachings of Christ, as the Church 
teaches them, and as preachers preach them. The 
hearers of the Word modify them to suit their 
own narrow, false, selfish judgments, and perverse 
tastes; accordingly, the greater part of the world, 
when it is a question of mixing the colors, by which 
Jesus Christ will be reproduced in themselves, 
either leave out penance wholly, or admit it in the 
most grudging and merely suggestive quantity. 
Hence, the horrid idea of our Lord merely as 
what the world likes to call the gentleman, and 
not — of necessity — the Adorable Saint that 
He is, — Tu solus sanctus; the kind and gentle 
in outward manner, and, not of necessity, the 
fearful, the stern, the self-denying, and crucified 
Christ, the fasting, thirsting, Saviour, the humbled 
Lord in the robe of a fool, the Victim slain for 
the redemption of the world. 

If penance has not departed from the religious 
system in the practice of the many, why do so 
many begrudge their sympathy, and, oftentimes, 
withhold it from those orders that are given up to 
the keen austerities and the sternest monastic rig- 
ors? Why does the modern religionist doubt the 
merit or question the good, or gainsay the use- 
fulness of the Carmelite, the Carthusian, or the 
Trappist? Of what use, say they, are such men and 



44 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

women, in such a life? And this question is asked 
by Catholics ; but not without showing grave dis- 
respect for the judgment of our dearest holy 
Mother Church, who has seen fit and pleased to 
sanction such. Is it progress to outlive the pious 
institutions of the Lord? Is it pious to reflect 
on anything that Holy Church approves? Nay, 
it is the consummation of effrontery, and a prog- 
ress that is the direst species of retrogression. 
Under all this unbelief in rigid self-denial, can we 
not discern the subterranean idea that penance, as 
Jesus Christ taught and practised it, is, after all, 
not necessary to the Christian religion to-day? 
But, do not, I ask you, such arbitrary judgments 
array themselves in conflict with the Master, Who 
inaugurated His teaching with the doctrine of Pen- 
ance : "Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand." — ''Unless ye do penance ye shall all 
perish?" 

It would seem, after men had denied penance, 
that they cared no more, nor desired, any longer, 
to be saved. But, this is not so ; men do wish to 
be saved ; but, men want to be saved in a new 
way. The old way trodden by Christ and His 
saints is a hard one. They do not want it, so, 
men simply repudiate it. Denying facts, however, 
does not change them : turning one's back upon 
the truth does not blot it out, nor change it in the 
least. Like the fool, who said in his heart, 'there 
is no God,' men, who fancy the idea of penance 
is not essential to true piety, cannot think as they 
say; for, reason or revelation must furnish the 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 45 

material for the foundation of any thought, to be 
such, and more than a simple fancy. The fool 
did not demolish God by his denial of His exist- 
ence. It is simply men's wish not to have penance. 

I have said that men 'wish' to be saved. It 
may safely be disputed, if the disposition that 
stops at the 'means' may be said to be truly a de- 
sire or real ' wish ' for an ' end.' I grant that it 
looks to be hardly more than a name; and yet, 
though it be but a wish of the 'wish,' it is as such 
after all, far more than cold indifference to salva- 
tion, which argues an absence of hope. It shows 
the soil is not of rock ; that the seed is bursting ; 
and this, in turn, shows some prospect of taking 
root and further on of ripening. 

But the idea of penance is still kept alive, not- 
withstanding, in our midst, by the lives of revered 
men and women, such as these, the cloistered vir- 
gins of unshod Carmel. Whilst such are with us, 
we may say that we have a token of the spirit 
that animated and lighted up the ages past of 
Christian chivalry ; but, beyond the few religious 
bodies, and especially those of a penitential 
character; and, above all, a holy and zealous 
priesthood, — martyrs bearing witness to Christ, 
not on the arena of blood, but in loneliness, with- 
out any sympathy or a word of praise from the 
world, on the hidden arena, that embraces the 
confessional, — made perhaps by the priest's own 
hands, — the homes of the poor and the squalid gar- 
ret, whither he brings Jesus Christ whilst others 
sleep, and where poverty, misery, wretchedness 



46 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

and filth minister to death : beyond, furthermore, 
the handful of devout and sincere women living 
poor in the world, in purity and virtue, amid the 
hardships of the kitchen, the moral perils of the 
workshop, the counter and the office ; and, fewer 
men, — these for the most part laborers, — yes, 
beyond the circle of these, the ' few who are 
chosen,' there is as much difference between the 
Christians of the early days and those of our 
times, as there is between heaven and earth, the 
religion of God and that of man, the reality and 
the sham. These few storm heaven : the multi- 
tude have laid down their arms. 

The life of Our Lord was ushered in by the 
shedding of the blood of the Innocents. It ended 
in His own cruel and violent death. The history 
of the early Church was written in deeds, not 
with pen and ink, but with their own fingers, tke 
fingers of heroes dipped in their own blood. 
Violence, blood, penance, — these make up the 
vocabulary of Christianity : these tell of war, that 
should be now, as of yore, when Job pronounced 
the life of man upon earth to be one of warfare ; 
now, as when the prophet David moaned in con- 
fession and prayer the words : "My enemies live 
and are stronger than I." Yes, now as then, there 
is no room for effeminacy in the idea of religious 
virtue and salvation ; no quarters for softness in 
capturing the kingdom of heaven. The camp 
and field ; the trumpet's blare, and the bugle's 
shrill blast, the din of cannon, the clash of sabres, 
the scent of powder ! — "The kingdom of heaven 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 47 

suffers violence." Penance, my brethren, penance ! 
It was in the beginning, it must be now, it 
shall be always. It is in the lexicon of Christi- 
anity, but an asterisk is placed against the word 
that declares it obsolete, but, I say to you 'an 
enemy hath done this.' Yes, an enemy it is who 
has sown cockle with the grain, who has preached 
a new gospel, different to the one our Lord 
preached, and His holy Church preaches to-day, 
but which perverse men will misconstrue. Surely, 
Gabriel's trumpet sounding the muster from the 
tomb on Resurrection Day is for soldiers, who have 
fallen bravely in Christian battle. 

We have begun a short review of the past ages ; 
but we have touched only upon the Old Law, in 
the conference that has gone before. The New 
Law awaits our attention. The one Figure, the 
Ideal Penitent, the Form that stands out above the 
heroes of the Old and the New Law, in the center, 
— our Model, our Type, our All, the One Saint — 
Tu solus Sanctus : need I speak His name? No ; 
but, it is always a new grace to repeat it, it leaves 
a fragrance on the lips, a sweet taste as of milk 
and honey on the tongue — Jesus. After our 
Divine Lord, but infinitely so, the most important 
personage we have to deal with, logically speak- 
ing, is John the Baptist. Bethink you of the 
character of the Forerunner. This is found, by 
implication, in his mission, but more directly, in 
his panegyric, as pronounced by the Master's 
own blessed tongue. We can have no doubts of 
the immense sanctity of the Baptist, after Our Lord 



48 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

has said of him, that a ' greater was not born of 
woman.' Chosen by God to be the herald of His 
Son, and to dispose the hearts of the people for 
the coming of the Redeemer, was this John. He 
was like the aurora preceding the Great Sun. 
He was, in accordance with such a destiny 
endowed, as indeed must needs have been, with 
tremendous corresponding lights and unusual 
strength of grace. It is to be remarked how 
unlike any other saint he was, — forehallowed. 
When he was born into the world John was no 
young rebel, as we, at that moment in our life, 
but fore-freed from all sin, from the state of 
enmity with God, and blemish. God's Mother was 
conceived without sin ; not so John, however, who, 
indeed, was not, as she, immaculate in his con- 
ception, but, smirched when conceived, as even 
we, with the slimy touch and taint of the dragon. 
John was conceived in original sin. — "In sin did 
my mother conceive me," as David said ; but^ 
whilst yet he lingered in his mother's womb in 
motionless stillness, as though he were sad, and 
brooding on his state of sinfulness ; and the dead- 
ness of sin was on him, God saw fit to purify him 
by coming near to him when His Mother, Mary, 
bore Him in her womb on a visit of charity to 
her cousin Elizabeth. Joy replaced, in an instant, 
the unborn child's pensive grief, and he grew 
forthwith nimble of motion, with the weight of 
sin removed, and bounded with joy for being 
now in the love and friendship of his God, and 
holding a right on heaven and glory — redeemed ! 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 49 

Our Lord sanctified John in this remarkable way, 
because his mission was a special one, namely, 
that of preparing the world for His own coming. 
By the imposing figure of the Baptist, the new 
Elias, the era of redemption opens up. He is to 
tell the world that if they would receive Jesus 
Christ they must show certain undoubted qualifica- 
tion and disposition. What is this disposition, 
this qualification for receiving Jesus Christ? You 
pause and you gaze about you to find an answer. 
Don't look around in the world ; you will not find 
it in this age. This qualification we must have, 
but, alas, we have it not. Are we not treasuring 
up an immense debt for a future day of reckoning? 

The disposition John the Baptist prescribes as 
indispensable for receiving Christ, and profiting 
by the Redemption, is penance. Penance was the 
Baptist's theme, and the whole burden of his 
mission and message to the world. Penance is 
the whole lesson of John the Baptist to the world : 
"Do penance or ye shall all perish." How 
savagely grand ; how grandly savage the Baptist 
in his garment of skins, emaciated body, reduced 
from sparse and ill fare, and with strange mag- 
netism, drawing to him by the sheer power of his 
holiness penitents and disciples galore ! This, I 
say, was his entire mission — "Penance;" this 
is the cost of discipleship. 

Penance is a hard word, but, our religion is not 
an easy one ; for, the man who lives up to its high 
and heavenly precepts with devotion and con- 
stancy to the end, earns a martyr's crown. It is 



50 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

important to ascertain how we stand toward this 
virtue, for, if penance is the disposition necessary 
for receiving Our Lord and so being redeemed, 
we must preserve this disposition, or part com- 
pany with God and the fellowship of grace. We 
have the doctrine that the Baptist preached, and 
just as he preached it; it is our heritage, it belongs 
to us ; he preached it to us. The Church and the 
saints have interpreted this doctrine. The Church 
has her Lent, her Advent, her Quarter-Tenses, 
and her Vigils. These leave no doubt of her 
mind on the necessity of penance, in the house of 
God, and in the lives of the elected. The saints 
have invariably followed the Baptist to the letter. 
Their lives show severity of austereness. The 
Holy Scriptures, diaphanous, on this point, yet 
so often inculcated by the Church, taught by the 
interpretations and teachings of her doctors, and 
illustrated by the practices and lives of her saints ; 
the Holy Scriptures, I say, so interpreted, should 
be our guide, our teacher, and the mould of our 
life. 

But, is it not, after all, true that, unconsciously, 
mayhap, for the most part, we are influenced by 
our surroundings, and shape our life to the pattern 
of our neighbors? Their life becomes our faith. 
" Exemflum trahit" is an adage applicable alike 
to good and bad example — " Example is a mag- 
net." If we see our neighbor neglecting his religious 
duties his indevotion may work and often does 
work harm upon us, unless we are resolute in 
following our lawful and infallible guide, — the 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 5 1 

Holy Scriptures, as interpreted and taught by the 
Church, and as practised by the saints whom she 
approves : " Put not your trust in princes, in the 
children of men in whom there is no salvation, '* 
says the prophet. Because the world, at large, 
loathes, and will disown the idea and practice of 
penance, we grow indifferent, by contact with it. 
We do as they do, whereas, our faith and the 
laws that should govern our actions, are written 
out and laid down by Our Lord : " I am the Way.'* 
He even hints at this danger of the world's con- 
tagion and bad example, and He warns us thereby 
to be alert, to be watchful, suspicious to detect 
and quick to shun it : " Teaching them to observe 
all things, whatsoever I have commanded you." 
It is so with penance, Our Lord lays it down for 
us. Why will we look about to see if So-and-so 
admits it or practises it ; we know our duty. It is 
to God. Christ taught it to us ; He is our Exem- 
plar : Tu solus sanctus — Tu solus Dominus* 
If all our neighbors were to do wrong, we shall 
find no justification in copying them. We decline 
to do penance, because our neighbors do no 
penance ; but Christ did His Father's will through 
every obstacle. Satan offered Him, on the high 
mountain, every inducement to swerve from the 
path of duty to His Father, but ' He was obedient 
unto death,' — < ' Behold, I come to do Thy will ; " 
' 1 have conquered the world,' says Our Lord : we 
cannot repeat His word. We follow the example 
of the world, we serve the world, we are the slaves 
of the world, therefore the world has overcome us 



52 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

and the world owns us : " Be not overcome by 
evil," says St. Paul. We do no penance because 
the world does not do it. The world is deceitful ; 
it follows the maxims of perdition ; it promises 
us happiness if we follow it. Satan pledged to 
Jesus the universe. Liar, it was not thine to 
bestow ! He is the Prince of this world. Let, my 
brethren, the world go its way. We owe it 
nothing; we are fools to pay it tribute. When it 
molests us, the answer of our blessed Master, 
before us, will be our answer ; when the world 
says : Put aside penance ; when its bad example 
says: " Follow me," our answer shall be: "The 
Lord, Thy God, Thou shalt adore, and Him alone 
shalt thou serve." " Follow me," said Jesus 
Christ to the accountant Levi. " Follow me," He 
says to us; not, perhaps, on the highest plane or 
state of religious perfection, but according to our 
own state, ' in the path of penance.' " If any 
man shall come after Me, let him take up his 
cross and follow Me." Penance is for all. 

We may applaud others who are brave in 
religion ; we may praise the saints, and yet, we, 
ourselves, remain fools, — unless we do penance 
and merit heaven. There is in manv minds a 
perilous idea that Christ is not so concerned 
for those in the world as He is for others who 
wear the religious habit. Salvation is, equally, 
for all. Christ loves all men. We should all, 
in religion, and in the world, practise, accord- 
ing to the rule of our state of life, the same 
zeal for accomplishing the ' one thing ' for 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 53 

which we were brought into this world, — the 
salvation of our soul. God loves you as He 
loves His priests and religious. He wishes with 
the same relative ardor your sanctification and 
your salvation as He wishes theirs. If you live 
a life of perfection, in the state in which God has 
placed you, you have as much right upon the king- 
dom of heaven as any of the saints. It was to all 
men, whether in the priesthood or in the religious 
state, or in the state of matrimony, or in the state 
of virginity in the world, the Master said : " Be 
ye holy as your heavenly Father is holy." 

The martyrs were despatched to their deaths : 
"Ad Bestias " was a familiar verdict upon our 
earlier brethren, delivered, as it always was, in the 
cold, imperious tone of the Roman dictator and 
judiciary. "Brethren, you fail to appreciate what 
it is to die by the beasts," said St. Cyprian. There 
is no disputing the test of such an ordeal. There 
was no deliberation or vacillation. Long before, 
they had learned their duty, and had resolved 
upon following it out. When Duty called, they 
rose up to do her bidding. The world tempted 
the martyrs. Fortune, position at court, the 
vision of the white hairs of aged parents, are speci- 
mens of obstacles that were flung in their path of 
duty to Jesus Christ ; they, like us, had pledged 
their word to Jesus Christ in baptism ; they went on 
manfully, led thither by the example of Our Lord, 
with unfaltering fidelity to their faith in Him. 
"What dost thou ask of the Church of God?' 
They answered, as we answer: "Faith." This 



54 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

same faith teaches us, it is our duty to dispose our 
hearts for the coming of Christ by penance. Not 
"AdBestias" not 'to the beasts,' for us, but, 'ad 
-pcenitentiam* ; do penance, do penance. 

It is a fact that if Our Lord were to reappear 
among us, or a prophet rise up in our midst, the 
Word of God would not be changed. The doctrine 
must remain as it is to the end of the world : 
"Unless ye do penance ye shall all perish;" the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness : "Prepare the 
way of the Lord, make straight His path." 

God's eternal Son has come to your hearts. 
You must put your souls in order, your interior 
household in readiness, to receive Him. In John's 
da}^, few did penance; for, 'Our Lord came unto His 
own and His own received Him not.' Far beneath 
the Master's pathetic plaint, that a material roof 
was denied Him for a shelter, — 'the Son of Man 
hath not whereon to lay His head,' there is a 
mystic and a truer grievance, a more bitter, and 
a sadder complaint : We refuse to do penance, 
and our hearts are unfit to house the Divine Guest : 
"My delight is to be with the children of men." 
We bid Him come in and abide with us, the night. 
With the pilgrim-disciples of Emmaus, we tell how 
4 the night is far on,' and invite Him to tarry with 
us. Remain with us, Master. Yes, we grow old, 
the shadows of evening are uniting, deepening to 
gloom; the kingdom of heaven is nigh — to be 
lost or gained. But God sees our souls ; He sees 
that we serve another prince ; our hearts are 
bestowed on another, whom, in spite of our prot- 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 55 

estation, we love more. Our allegiance has been 
withdrawn from Him, and given over to a usurper's 
crown. He turns away, sorrow-stricken. What 
a reproach to the world are those words record- 
ing its inhospitableness to Jesus, its ingratitude I 
There is a terrible sadness in the utterance of the 
grievance. I fancy how His voice trembled, and 
His eyes grew moist, as, with emotion, He spoke 
the word : "The Son of Man hath not whereon 
to lay His head." The world never wanted Our 
Lord : it refused Him a place wherein to be born. 
It still shuts Him out from a home. It is not sur- 
prising that, afterward, they got rid of Him. If, 
indeed, the children of God had done penance, 
this shame would not to-day stand against them 
as a handwriting on the wall, which, being inter- 
preted, meant then, what it means now, to us : 
" Unless ye do penance ye shall all perish." 

"He came unto His own," — you know the story. 
He comes to us: Is it a different story? Great 
stones are rolled up against the gates of our 
hearts. Evil habits, — like giant bowlders, that 
become part of the very earth itself, and seem 
inseparable from it, — become, as it were, a second 
nature, and prevent God's access to our souls. 
We must call off the obstacles ; we must remove 
our wickedness, and renew our fealty to God in 
the firm resolve of entering upon a cleaner life. 
And all this means — penance ! We must undo 
the evil we have done. We may wish, in a way, 
to receive Our Lord, but, this wish is fruitless and 
void of efficacy, unless we put our hand to the 



5 6 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

obstacles that we have deliberately thrown in His 
way and remove them from the King's path — 
4 unless ye do penance ye shall all perish.' God, 
it is true, will put His Hand to these obstacles to 
help remove them. We cannot remove them 
without Him ; He will not remove them without 
us. Sometimes an obstacle, a vice may be done 
away with by one grand effort of the opposite 
virtue ; more often it is removed like the rock, 
by the hammer, piece by piece. Penance sounds 
hard to us. There is no denying, it is not easy, 
but, it is essential, nevertheless. The Jews passed 
the same verdict on the Real Presence. When 
the Master first preached the sublime dog- 
ma: "Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man 
and drink His Blood ye shall not have life in 
you," the Jews said : "This is a hard saying;" 
aye, but it is a true one, — there's the rub. 

In medicine, there are two phases of applica- 
tion, the therapeutic and the prophylactic. The 
one prevents diseases and the other cures. Mor- 
tification, as St. Paul practised it when he said : 
"I daily chastise my body and reduce it to sub- 
jection," is a preventive. Human nature is in a 
universal state of disease. Disease is its normal 
state. We must continually be under treatment 
to prevent : Vigilate! Watch out ! — cure disease 
by preventing it. We prevent sin by mortifi- 
cation, and we cure it by penance. Mortification, 
then, may be said to be a therapeutic penance. 
Without it, — no mortal excepted, — sin will over- 
come us. In the mind and heart, ambition and 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 57 

rebellion lie immortal, as long as we are mortal. 
The fires of concupiscence are never utterly 
quenched : We are fastened to the goad of the flesh, 
like martyrs fastened to the stake, and in its slow 
and tantalizing fires, deserve the crown. Like the 
serpent coiled up in silent slumber, these things 
may not show any activity until late in our life. The 
demon has waited and watched for this hour, to 
catch us out of training, and attack us. As the 
cancer works us harm, muffled in its action ; as the 
sap that flows — noiselessly, the forces of our 
soul pass out from us leaving us weak before our 
adversaries. Not to do penance means sure decay : 
Like the tree that is dead, yet, seems to have life — 
it rots away inwardly, and falls under the first 
blow of the axe-man, in pathetic ruin. Beware, 
then, of the canker-worm: " O, that this good 
blossom could be kept from cankers ! " (Shake- 
speare ii, Henry IV.) 

We had shunned penance, that prevents. 
Humility, self-denial and suffering had ceased to 
enter into our religious life ; when, now, our 
concealed passions show themselves, stronger for 
nursing, and refreshed by slumber, we are not 
prepared for them, — vigilate! "Believe me," says 
St. Augustine, "I am a bishop; I do not lie; I 
have seen the Cedar of Lebanon, and the ram 
of the flock, fall, in whom I had as much trust as 
in Gregory and Ambrose." 

We do preach penance. The contagion of 
religious indifference has nowise affected the 
zeal of preachers, or dimmed their perceptions 



58 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

on the score of penance ; but somehow, the 
seed will fall on the rock. Perhaps it is not true 
to assert that the multitudes throw off their 
belief in penance. It might be a more skilful 
diagnosis to pronounce the disease inordinate 
temporal activity. This embraces two elements ; 
the inordinate taste, and the subject of it. I 
think our activity, here, in America, amounts to 
disease. To get on in business, with a view to 
reaching ' social ' standing, is the predominant fea- 
ture of our national character: it really amounts 
to a disease. Even here, again, our activity is 
abnormal, and men are bent upon getting rich 
in the quickest possible time. Anything that 
does not arrive at the goal of our ambition, 
and especially, what, at the same time, it fails 
of doing this, consumes much time, is simply out 
of the question. It is getting so into our consti- 
tution that we lack, for example, great and finished 
musicians ; for, the children loathe the drudgery 
of slowly counting the measure of time. The 
same holds in all other branches of art, where 
patient labor is essential to perfection. In hotter 
climates the people are slower. We call them 
sleepy, but their growth is natural — not forced ; 
ours is development by incubation. Business ! 
Business ! Business ! This is the familiar cry, 
heard from East to West. As we live we die — 
quickly. 

The Jews slew Christ, and they are a curse to 
the world. Their ravenous greed for wealth has, 
in a way, compelled the rest of the world to look 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 59 

sharp, or be prepared to find all their possessions 
in the hands of these gold-worshippers, as is 
the case, in Austria, to-day, where the Jews have 
possessed themselves of most of the domains of 
honored and Catholic noblemen. The Jews are 
chiefly at the root of this money-madness. They 
always preferred the golden calf to the Son of 
God. 

The Lenten season is at hand, when we hear 
sung, in the churches, in deep sepulchral tone, 
the cry of the prophet: "With desolation is the 
world made desolate, because there is no one, 
who thinketh in his heart." How does the world 
receive the prophetic message? They muse : it 
takes time ; I cannot afford to take one hour from 
my busy life of the body and the concerns of this 
world to bestow it on my soul. It takes time ! 
Yes, it takes time from my business ! Money- 
mad, the world will not heed the prophet's voice ; 
it passes on, goes its old way — "Fool ! this night 
thy soul will be demanded of thee." Yes, right 
in the full bloom of life, in the glamor of hu- 
man prosperity, in the full flush of social stand- 
ing, with the most gilded and roseate hopes of a 
smooth, long and happy life, — aye, in the high 
noon of his existence, Death knocks at the rich 
man's door to claim him. He leaves his treasures 
to ungrateful heirs, who will soon lose sight of 
his toils ; he goes into the grave. Who shall say 
this is not madness? He had no time for God 
and his soul, before. He has it now, and where? 
O God ! The word said in kindly warning by 



60 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

the lips of Christ will be spoken in fiendish 
irony, in a wild yell, and mockingly — 'What doth 
it profit a man if he gain the world and suffer the 
loss of his own soul." Ha ! Ha ! 

Do not look around in the world for the quali- 
fications of the kingdom of Christ, unless you 
draw aside the veil of a monastery, or peer into 
the lives of those I have indicated above, of 
Christ-like priests, devout religious, and simple, 
God-fearing laics. Elsewhere, we will search in 
vain for lives that reflect the early ages, — such 
lives as Cyprian, Ignatius, Isidore, and the mar- 
tyrs lived. Yet, it is essential to us all to save 
our soul. Notwithstanding the world around us 
and the divergent spirit of the age, John the 
Baptist must stand up for our ideal of the qualifica- 
tions that must be found in the Christian life that is 
ready for the coming of the Lord. The Baptist is 
the doctor of penance : He lived like a savage, 
aloof from men, out in the wilderness. His living 
consisted of locusts and wild honey. John fled from 
the world, because the world's touch is pernicious. 
Penance so raised him up in holiness that men 
took him to be, indeed, the Christ Himself. His 
eyes showed the spiritual lustre of his divinely- 
illumined and divinely-loving soul, — soft and mag- 
netic, stern, yet pathetic. His words are charged 
with the influence of his own heart, and the tre- 
mendous power of his graces to stir up men to 
eood. "Out of the abundance of the heart the 
mouth speaketh," Ere we withdraw our spirit 
from John the Baptist and his times ; before we 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 6v 

cease to commune with this child of the wilder- 
ness, let us pray him to teach us the lesson of 
penance, to obtain for us the grace to mend our 
cowardice, and the further grace to take on cour- 
age for the practice of this virtue the rest of our 
days. 

The next great example of penance is Peter. 
Apostacy and perjury constitute his two-fold 
sin. It is clear that Peter looked upon himself in 
the light of the strongest adherent and most 
faithful follower of Our Lord. When the Lord 
had hinted at the possibility of his defection, 
Peter was manifestly hurt, and, at once, and fer- 
vently, resented the Rabbi's impeachment. Yes, 
sin takes the proud man off his high horse and 
humbles him to the dust. But Peter's boisterous, 
conceited and braggart spirit was soon changed 
when the cock crowed for the third time, and a 
sense of his horrible guilt shot like a serpent of 
fire from every avenue of his body, to his heart 
and to every sense, now burning him with fever- 
ishness, and then leaving him cold and clammy 
and as one bewildered. So, Peter, Apostle of 
God, now heaven's best grace has come to thee — ■ 
thou art humbled ; melancholy, in the sight of 
thine own enfeeblement. An apostate ! Yes : and 
afterwards the fountain-head, whence the lambs 
and sheep of the Lord's flock shall drink in truth, 
for all time. Wonders of God ! This man de- 
nied Jesus ; he perjured himself. This was his 
sin. Now his penance. This we find amply in 
the text : "Peter going forth wept bitterly." He 

D 



62 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

cried when he realized what he had done. When 
the Master looked at him, the unfortunate Apostle 
felt the full weight of his shame, his compunction, 
and his grief. Yes, those adorable Eyes of Jesus 
shot darts of fire into Peter's soul : and those were 
sorrowful Eyes, sad for sin ; and the pale, sad 
Face imparted Its grief to the fallen Apostle, and 
with a mystic spell, woven of Its glance, planted 
with Its sympathy the seed of repentance, and 
laid in his heart the foundation of an humble 
and sincere atonement: Peter had imitated the 
prophet David in his sin; he imitated his royal 
predecessor in his atonement : " Every night I will 
wash my bed." "The Lord hath heard the voice 
of my weeping," said the prophet. "Peter going 
forth wept bitterly." 

What a shock we get at suddenly beholding 
ourselves as we are — the weak, puny things — the 
nothings. Peter fancied himself something and 
someone, but Peter was nothing of himself. He 
now understands David's wise word, which so 
many in the world have failed to understand : that 
1 unless the Lord build the city, they labor in 
vain that build it.' Houses that God builds never 
fall ; houses that men build fall. Virtue resting on 
God alone stands. Virtue that reckons on Self is 
doomed to catastrophe. It is said, that weeping 
for his downfall became a life-habit of atonement 
with St. Peter. St. Jerome says as much, when 
he tells us, that the Apostle's cheeks were furrowed 
from his constant weeping. Peter is better re- 
membered by his sin ; he should be equally, if not 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES, 63 

better, borne in memory for the speediness and 
lastingness of his atonement. St. Peter is a model 
of penance in its character and its extent. We, too, 
should make our life what the Council of Trent 
tells us, — one of penance: "If a man has once 
sinned, his whole life ought not to be considered a 
whit longer than the due measure of atonement." 
If we have sinned like Peter, God will hold us 
under obligation to make atonement like him. 

An Ideal of true repentance is also found in Mary 
Magdalen. Like Chloris, she so did up her tresses, 
selected and adjusted her dress and millinery, as 
to suit the world. Poor thing ! she believed the 
world. Still, woman will continue, I suppose, to 
be vain, and man will continue to be ungallant, 
using her vanity for a weapon against her. 

Beauty makes woman vain. It endows her 
with a certain dangerous power to attract the eye. 
Fatal is the day when she begins to use — say, 
abuse it. Grace knocks at Magdalen's heart, the 
love of Jesus flashes on her soul; she answers the 
summons ; she resolves on a new career ; her old 
tricks and ways, associations and pastimes, finery 
and dress she at once lays aside. She deplores 
the past and is determined to redeem it. Pen- 
ance is the means of atonement, and, bravely she 
accepts it. It is enough to recall that pathetic 
scene of holy and earnest passionateness, wherein, 
the central Figure of our life, the Lord and Mas- 
ter, is seated at the table with His friends, when 
Mary Magdalen rushes in, at the height of the 
festivity, and, without courtesy — for she was 



64 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

fully absorbed in devotion to Christ and forgot 
for the moment the little proprieties and etiquette 
of society, — proceeds, with pious abandon, to 
bathe the feet of her injured Lord in the pool 
of her tears, and to wipe the soft, milk-white skin 
with her own hair. Here is penance ! The chief 
instruments of her offense — her hair and her face, 
become now the instruments of her atonement. 
The unguents that had aided and abetted her in 
her sinful conquests, she brings, in their precious 
caskets, and without stint, pours them on the 
delicate feet of the Master. The passion, with 
which she seeks Jesus, outpasses, in earnestness 
as well as in character, the passion she had so 
extravagantly poured out, in her past life, on 
creatures. Our Lord forgives her, and proclaims, 
before all, the reality of her love, above even that 
of those about Him ; commends it, and assures 
Magdalen of the forgiveness of her sin. I need 
not say how long or how ardently she did pen- 
ance. The empty sepulchre, if it had voice, 
could tell, before which she wept in unconsolable 
grief for the Saviour, on Easter morn. The angel 
who witnessed her terrible emotion, or the Lord 
Himself, Who saw all, and so affectionately 
addressed her as one near to Him — Mary ! None 
else may know it fully. This episode thrills us 
to the heart roots ; it lays bare the Heart of Jesus. 
Turning from the picture, we say to ourselves : 
there is but one Jesus ! No human being can 
ever be so sweet and so merciful as He Tu sokes 
Jesus ! 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 6$ 

Set the two, side by side, for comparison : the 
life of the early Christians and that of our day, 
and the conclusion forces itself upon us that there 
is an abuse of mercy, in our day. The sins of 
our earlier brethren were not frequent. Piety was 
at a white heat. The terrors of the temporal 
punishments, embodied in the satisfactions in- 
spired by the Church, held them within bounds^ 
of a healthy fear. Tertullian gives us the motive 
of these satisfactions. " Without fear," says he, 
" there is no correction, and without correction 
there will be no penance." 

The history of the Church in its system of pen- 
ance may be divided into four periods. The first 
stretches from the beginning to St. Cyprian, 
covering two hundred and fifty years, during 
which we may well believe that penances, put 
upon sin, were consistent, in rigor, with the 
demands of the times. Then, follow what are 
called the four degrees of ' Canonical Penance,' 
lasting up to the eighth century. The third period 
extends from the eighth to the eleventh century, 
during which a change had come about ; and the 
fourth, from the eleventh century to the Council 
of Trent, when the old Canonical Penances were 
wholly abolished and it was left to the judgment of 
each individual confessor to determine and lay 
on the penances, decided by him as proper and 
salutary — not, indeed, a false pretense, nor yet an 
infliction that would prove inexpedient. In the 
first period, the penances were worthy of the 
name, and smarted ; but it remained for the two 



66 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

hundred and fiftieth year of the Christian era 
to offer us a full view, and a thorough insight 
into the idea the Church of God entertained and 
inspired into the faithful, on the justice and holiness 
of the Almighty. There were, in the year 250, 
Canonical Penances. It is generally supposed 
that the Canonical Penances were not established 
until that time. St. Cyprian was very slow, in 
admitting to absolution any person who had fallen 
away from the Faith. His course occasioned 
some discussion. There were some half dozen, 
Novatus and others - — malcontents, who bore 
dislike to Cyprian, and, using it as a mask, bitterly 
opposed him in this discipline. They affected to 
argue that the saint, in his sledge-hammer scheme, 
so to speak, was too severe upon those who, in an 
unfortunate moment, had failed of confessing 
Jesus Christ, in the face of persecution, when sum- 
moned to confess His holy Name. It is true, St. 
Cyprian was, seemingly, rigorous ; but, one has 
merely to cast a glance at the condition of times 
and affairs that then prevailed, to no longer dis- 
pute the real wisdom of St. Cyprian's judgment. 
The Faith of Jesus Christ, fresh from the Hand of 
God, was in its weak infancy. Its growth was 
possible, but, only, — God so willing, — by the most 
unflinching courage to be displayed by her chil- 
dren, and the willing and abundant sacrifice of 
their blood. It was a time when the Church, like a 
young combatant, first stepped forward to engage 
her triple adversary, and she must now deserve 
respect as an adversary, and merit attention. The 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 6j 

effect of her teaching, and the influence of her 
grace over every earthly tie and human feeling, the 
reality of the firm, bright hope in the future life> 
made certain in the promises of Jesus of a joy 
perpetual, hereafter, to compensate for that free 
surrender which He now demands of them of 
the things of this world, by a cheerful and bloody 
death — all this was necessary, then. The blood 
of Christians was, in God's design, to be 'the seed 
of Christianity,' and so, defection from the Faith, 
in those days, and under those conditions, was 
punished by the greatest difficulty in getting 
back to the Church. In this way, it was pur- 
posed to obviate defections and back-sliding, and 
so save many souls, preserving them against the 
denial of their Faith, by the vision of severe 
temporal chastisements. Accordingly, the laws 
were made rigid to meet a sublime and solemn 
emergency. It has succeeded well — as the 
Church in all things must. 

The lives of our first brethren are our precious 
inheritance ; their courage and faith, our treasure- 
house of help and inspiration : their memory 
should be kept vivid in our minds, and sweet to 
our hearts and tongues. They built up the 
Church. We are contented to build only in stone. 
They built the real, the inner Church ; we, the 
outer : but, God wills us to build the two. 

During the reign of the Canonical Penances, 
there were three sins that were never wholly recon- 
ciled, when once committed and publicly known. 
Idolatry, adultery and homicide were the sins. 



68 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

The guilty were not allowed to make gifts — 
* offer torium? or to consort with the faithful. In 
this way, the discipline of the Church impressed 
on the believers in Christ the fact that Chris- 
tianity was a pearl, that must not be cast to the 
swine ; that it is a high, noble, and chivalric 
fealty, and that we must prove our allegiance to 
our King by noble and courageous deeds. The 
breast of Mother Church gives suck to brave 
hearts : she blushes for cowards. 

There were four degrees of Canonical Penance. 
The first degree took in the ' weepers' : It was 
their duty to cry aloud for their sins. These were 
not allowed to have any public prayer said over 
them ; they knelt and begged God for mercy ; 
they wore a hair cloth, and were bespread with 
ashes. This ordeal lasted from one to five years, 
according to the sin. To enter the churches of 
those days — much after the fashion of St. Peter's 
and St. Sylvester's in Rome to-day — we pass from 
the highway under an arch to a courtyard beyond, 
and there, in the middle, a fountain stands, where 
the faithful of the Lord wash their faces and 
hands for the worship of the Clean Oblation. 
Leaving the courtyard, and its fountain behind us, 
we move on and enter the vestibule of the church 
— which was larger then than in our day — and 
we press on, still further, to the church proper, 
where the pulpit stands, in the center, from which 
the bishops and priests expound the glorious 
beliefs of Christianity to the brethren, and 
exhort the faithful to confess their Lord and 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 69 

Master, in the glare of fire, and in the very jaws 
of hungry lions. The 'weepers' remained outside, 
in the open air, prostrate or kneeling, fertilizing 
their petitions with tears and lamentations for 
mercy. 

It reads like a romance, — the history of those 
-early days, — but this is because the earlier 
brethren understood what it meant to offend God. 
Alas, many of us do not. O God, is it not true, 
that in the case of many of us, the grand inheri- 
tance of a faith founded and nursed in blood, is 
cast to the very dogs. We stand unimpressed by 
its loftiness and dignity, and senseless to its 
beauty. Yes, we seem like a temple in ruins, 
like a fallen race ; or, again, as we have said, a 
masterpiece of finest statuary minus an arm, a 
leg, an eye, or other member or feature — dis- 
figured, as dug up out of the heap of ruins of the 
past ages. Yet, the Church is the same. Saints 
are in her as of yore ; only, the scene of their 
triumphs is not any longer so accessible to the 
public gaze. Tis hidden, and yet for the chosen 
of to-day, the Christian life is as truly so as the 
sacrifice of the olden days, but restricted to those 
'few' who do all that the Church of God demands 
of them for their sanctification. Formerly it was 
a regime of blood ; now the enemy of our souls 
has contrived a new stratagem against the king- 
dom of God, or rather, revived the old one ; since 
Herod had the fool's wrap folded around the 
Eternal Son of Wisdom Himself. We are called 
fools for the sake of Christ. We are called 



70 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

pitiable dupes. This, I say, is Herod's ruse — 
not so new after all ! Some can bear up under 
most other trials, but quake under the derision of 
the so-called intellectual world, and desert their 
colors, or diminish their devotion to Christ, 
because as the so-called intellectual world has it : 
Catholic Faith congests the mind, contracts human 
liberty, and does such like unsober things. As 
the Catholic passes along the public highway, and, 
very especially, if that Catholic happens to be 
the priest, who wears the glorious mark of his 
divine and solemn office, the stares and signs of 
contempt or pity, or antagonism harass or try 
the heart. Feelings of resentment and kindred 
emotions will make their appearance within us, but 
we must bear with all this in charity and patience, 
as the early Christian martyrs of the Faith went to 
their arena, — for Christ's blessed sake. The 
martyrs of the past did not draw their weapons 
to defend their Faith or themselves : like the lamb 
led to the slaughter who opened not its mouth, 
they were silent: so must we be silent. The 
sword of steel is not drawn against us, but a 
sword of mockery, contempt and social antagon- 
ism. " Put up thy sword," said Christ to Peter. 
We must not resent these affronts, so eloquent, 
though unspoken, and the deeper for being 
unspoken. Our sword must sleep on, in its scab- 
bard : — "He that is patient," says St. Augustine, 
"conquers: he that is impatient is overcome." 

The second degree of Canonical Penance took 
in the ' hearers.' Their place was in the vestibule 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 7 1 

of the church, and their function, to listen to the 
instructions on the laws and commandments they 
had broken. If they had not truly known the 
law they yet truly needed enlightenment ; and if 
they wantonly despised the law, they must be 
humbled. During all the time of this degree, the 
penitent was kept under the severest laws of fast- 
ing ; he was prohibited entering the church, and 
was compelled to remain, without, unabsolved. 
This ordeal covered a period of not less than one, 
nor more than five years, ordinarily. The third 
degree allowed the penitents to enter the church 
and to advance as far as the rostrum or pulpit, 
where the deacon read the gospel. Here for the 
first time the Church allowed public prayers to 
be read over them. At the gospel they were 
sent out as being yet unworthy to assist at the 
Holy Sacrifice. Penitents of the fourth degree 
were called ' consistent^.' These were brought in, 
between the pulpit and chancel. Prostrate dur- 
ing the service, they were not suffered to receive 
the Body and Blood of Christ, for a length of 
time, according to the character of their sins, and 
the judgment and the prudence of the bishop. 
On the completion of this degree, the penitent 
set off his career of atonement by confessing 
publicly his sin, and as publicly receiving absolu- 
tion from the bishop. 

Looking back into these earlier ages, we are 
touched, and even thrilled, by the counter-strategy 
of the Church to offset the tremendous odds pit- 
ted against her — social honors, military glory, 



72 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

fortune, power, pleasure, the blazing effulgence of 
vast imperial Rome. The faithful must be true 
to the laws, now, above all other times. How 
deep, how mysterious, how fearfully beautiful this 
strategy ! — victory by blood and slaughter, 
wherein the slaughtered are the victors. Yes, per- 
secution and violence are as breath to the nostrils 
of the Church : i( Unless ye drink the Blood of 
the Son of Man ye shall not have life in you." 
The Blood of Our Lord was created to be poured 
out to bless and sanctify, and, in so doing, enable 
us to have the Christian courage to be faithful to 
Him, and, if need be, pour out our own blood to 
confess His Name ; 'for the disciple is not greater 
than the Master.' The faithful lived in those 
days to Christianize the world ; those were days 
of Christian apostleship, when the lives of God's 
children were destined to exhibit a standard of 
the influence of Christianity on morals, so that 
Cyprian and Tertullian and other apologists could 
point to the lives of Christian men and exclaim, 
before the pagans : " Behold the meaning of our 
religion ! " It was essential, in those days, and 
the discipline of the Church was most wise and 
becoming — as it always is — and suited to the 
exigencies of the hour. 

The discipline of Canonical Penance lasted, 
unmildened, for eight hundred years. Christians 
could not soon forget the discipline of penance to 
which an apostate was subjected. Apart from its 
intrinsic heinousness and shame, — for it is a 
most ignominious, horrible, and all but unpardon- 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 73 

able guilt, to deny the Master, — we must bear in 
mind, it was a common occurrence for Christians 
to be brought before their cruel judges and ruth- 
less butchers. Confession of Christ meant death. 
There were a few faint hearts, in those days, but 
the most of our early brothers met their bloody 
fate with a calm resignation, aye, a ripple of joy, 
and the soft smile of expectant love and hallowed 
peace. It has been said that in the first four 
hundred years there were eleven millions put to 
death for confessing Jesus Christ. 

The apostate was put on bread and water for 
ten years : For homicide, Communion was denied 
up to the death-bed ; for drunkenness, a fast, for a 
greater or lesser period, on bread and water. So, 
throughout, there were penances to meet every 
emergency of the Church, thus, surrounding her 
by a high, strong, deep wall of discipline, that 
would leave no vulnerable spot for the shafts of 
the enemy, whilst it kept the soldiers of Jesus 
Christ safe within the breastworks. The same 
Church, the same God, the same law ! but we are 
not the same. Christ has not changed, the 
Gospel has not changed ; the guilt of sin is the 
same now, as then. Perchance, you fancy, be- 
cause these penances were so rigid, there must 
have been dispensations, or a loose application of 
the law ; that, in the matter of Canonical Penances, 
the bark of the Church was worse than her bite. 
To meet this suspicion we may with profit select 
a few specimens from among the penitents of 
earlier days, who, by reason of their dignity, 



74 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

might be esteemed the most likely to enjoy any 
concession of the law. 

In the time of the Emperor Theodosius, in the 
city of Thessalonica, during the days of St. Am- 
brose, a revolt of the people occurred. In the 
fervor of his indignation, the emperor commanded 
the slaughter of all the inhabitants of the sedi- 
tious city, without discrimination. The soldiers 
came upon the Thessalonians in the midst of a 
feast, in the public square. Men, women, and 
children, independent of character, birth, or 
fortune, were put to the sword, to the number of 
eight thousand souls. Now, the emperor, in due 
course of time, came to Milan and proceeded, at 
the usual time, to the church, to assist at the 
divine offices. Ambrose, the fearless prelate, and 
wise shepherd, stood in waiting for him, at the 
door of the church. Theodosius had shed inno- 
cent blood in a paroxysm of temper. Ambrose 
grasped the situation, and was resolved that an 
awful scandal should be repaired by whomso it 
were given ; aye, though that one were a monarch. 
The two met in the vestibule of the church. Am- 
brose bade the emperor withdraw from the temple 
of God and do penance for his dreadful sin. The 
sin he had committed cried out for penance to 
the Church for the scandal of it ; now, he must 
go, and render himself by his humble atonement 
worthy to assist anew with unbloody hands at 
the Holy Oblation. "Go hence and do not add 
a new sin to those you have already committed, " 
said St. Ambrose. The emperor was humbled ; 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 75 

the self-confusion of the monarch might have 
more than cancelled his error, in the sight of God. 
A modern king might have defied his religious 
superior : aye, has not a Catholic monarch con- 
fiscated the very property of the religion, and 
turned her convents and her schools into mercan- 
tile offices and military barracks, and snapped his 
fingers at the venerable Pontiff who presides over 
the Church of God, in defiance of God and the 
Pope's apostolic power? If the monarch of to- 
day and his menial ministers, who stand excom- 
municated from the Church of Jesus Christ, would 
come and humble themselves and repair the 
scandal which they have given to the whole 
world, they would show some of the faith and 
the piety of a Theodosius. But the world does 
not expect this phenomenon in Italy, where the 
subjects of a sacrilegious monarch love their king 
more than their God, — "Render to Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's, and to God the things 
that are God's." " Father Ambrose," said the 
emperor meekly, " David sinned and was par- 
doned." The prelate was equal to the king : 
"You have imitated David in his sin, go now and 
imitate him in his penance." For eight months, 
enveloped in sackcloth and besmeared with ashes, 
subsisting on bread and water, in utter seclusion, 
denying himself to everyone, the kingly penitent 
satisfied the Church of God for his sin and 
repaired the scandal he had given. At the expir- 
ation of eight months, he came to the church, but 
was obliged, before he could receive Communion, 



76 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

to prostrate himself on the ground, and to con 
fess that he had been guilty of innocent blood. 
What, if any ruler of our day were to be put to 
this test, or any subject of holy Church? Yet, 
behold the edifying spectacle of this royal peni- 
tent and splendid character, prostrated in the 
company of his fellow-sinners, rich and poor, 
asking, before all, pardon of God, of the bishop, 
of the priests, and of the whole Christian world. 
He did his penance, and was received back into 
the Church and her communion, when St. Ambrose 
gave him public absolution. 

Fabiola was of high degree : a rupture in the 
conjugal relation came about by adultery. Ill 
advised, she hearkened to false friends, and entered 
wedlock anew, or affected so to do, during the 
lifetime of her divorced spouse. When the latter 
died, remorse came to her through the grace of 
God. She, a woman of high rank, had scandalized 
the faithful. She did a public penance to expiate 
the wrong. St. Jerome has written her epitaph : 
" In view of the whole city of Rome, she took her 
place among the penitents, on the vigil of Easter, 
in the church of St. John Lateran. The bishop, 
priests and people joined in a fellowship of tears. 
Her face and hands and neck were besmeared 
with ashes." (Ep. 30.) There the fair sinner 
bent her lithe body low in compunction ; in sorrow, 
silent, and too deep for any other utterance but 
the sigh that made its forced escape, and which 
expressed the overwhelming force of her grief ; a 
sorrow so great that, if it had not found an outlet, 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. J 7 

must burst the bands that contain and holdl 
together the reservoir of her heart. There are 
sorrows that can kill, but God does not ask so* 
much from us. 

St. Ambrose wrote to a female penitent as fol- 
lows : "Shear the locks that have been the source 
of so much vanity and the occasion of thy fall. 
Let thine eyes, that, heretofore, have looked upon 
evil things, turn, henceforth, into fountains, whence 
streams of tears shall flow. Let thy face, for whose 
beauty thou hast cherished a shameless passion,, 
turn to paleness and emaciation. By word, by 
punishment, and fasting ; by every way afflict thy 
body, in whose natural grace and fairness thou 
hast indulged thyself in empty complacency ; 
scatter ashes over it, wrap it up in haircloth, and 
thus endeavor to awaken in thyself a horror of 
sin forevermore." 

Christian apologists could once stand up before 
emperors and judges, and with a holy pride and a 
calm, buoyant confidence, point to the morals of 
the Christian family, as an irrefutable argument of 
defence. Tertullian, Justin, and the rest, could, in 
a thrill of eloquent enthusiasm, challenge the 
pagans to dredge the records of the courts to 
discover a Christian name entered upon the roll 
of criminals and law-breakers. Purity of morals, 
justice, charity, regard for the life of one's fellows, 
respect for woman and her dignity, sobriety in all 
things — these form our glorious heritage from 
Christ, and a distinguishing mark of true piety. 
Consult our criminal records to-day : go, in person, 



78 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

and question the prisoners themselves, or attend 
the religious offices, to know the truth ; and, be 
prepared to feel ashamed of the numbers of our 
own people confined within prison-walls. Where- 
fore this change from the glories of the past to 
the shame of the present? Verily, we have not 
built after God's design. The corner-stone of our 
personal piety has been removed. Sacrifice that 
costs us one farthing's-worth of human pleasure 
we will not have. It matters not to us, seemingly, 
how great the price which the Redeemer of the 
world paid down for our redemption. We want 
no sacrifice, — that free and noble tribute of a soul's 
love ; we repudiate even our obligations to God's 
justice ; we refuse to satisfy for our sins, and to 
atone for the wrongs we have done Him. We 
want no penance ; we want none of God's love ; we 
give Him none of ours. We want less of His jus- 
tice, we give Him no justice. And all this goes on 
in spite of the words : "Render to God the things 
that are God's." What then? yes, brethren, what 
then do we want? What, indeed, can we expect? 
The world wants its own way and will have its 
own pleasures — the pleasures of the wine-cup, and 
of the flesh, the fascination of the sceptre, and 
the drunkenness of fame. It will not give up the 
smallest fraction of these things. Then the world 
may expect to perish. 

"Do penance for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand." "My kingdom for a horse ;" shouted the 
monarch of old. "My kingdom for penance," 
says Jesus Christ. Christ's Word is the law, the 



SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. 79 

compact, the promise, and the guarantee that, 
with penance, we shall be saved ; and it registers 
a vow that, without it, we must be lost for all 
eternity : "Unless ye do penance ye shall perish." 
Brethren, the rest lies with ourselves ; in God's 
name let us do penance. 



80 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 



CHAPTER III. 

A STUDY IN PENANCE. 

We do not have to strain our eyes to make 
observation of the mutual likeness in outline and 
development in the spiritual and physical worlds. 
Our Lord, in His plan for the sanctification of 
mankind, shows us these corresponding relations 
in the two orders, the natural and the supernatural. 
Penance fills, in the spiritual life, the department 
occupied by medicine in the natural life of man. 
We might, then, classify penance under the head- 
ing of the medical department of religion. In the 
pulpit, the priest of God is the teacher. In the 
sick chamber he is the father to cheer and comfort. 
He is so at the altar table where he breaks the 
Bread of Life to his children. In the tribunal 
of penance, he is confessor — that is to say, by 
excellence, the physician. Penance looks after the 
weaknesses and diseases that harass the human 
soul. After we are born we have to grow. There 
are joints to be welded, limbs to be fastened more 
securely on their hinges, muscular tendons to be 
developed in order to meet the exigencies of the 
general growth of the body. We are bound, in 
the meantime, from the very beginning, and 
throughout its existence, to nourish the body. 
But sometimes we have bad health, or, at all 
events, an occasional indisposition will overtake 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 8 1 

us. We need a curative ; we need physicians. 
We need those men who apply themselves to a 
professional knowledge and insight into the 
human frame, who will search out the why and 
wherefore of its weaknesses, and who, by an 
earnest, assiduous study of the natural elements 
or physics, and by winning a mastery of the 
principles of treatment laid down by the great 
physicists, who are the fathers of natural science, 
will find readily the most assured treatment, and 
will be able accordingly to give us the advantage 
of the speediest and best cure for our disease. 

The fac simile of this design and law obtains, 
and is duplicated, in the department of penance, 
in the great system of the spiritual world. We 
are born into the supernatural life at baptism : 
"Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy 
Ghost, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." 
We grow until our limbs are knitted : this is 
being strengthened by confirmation, when we 
shall be said to have come into spiritual manhood 
that will enable us with its hardiness, its prowess, 
and its endurance, to step into the field of battle 
to fight and endure the hardships of war: "The 
life of man upon earth is a warfare," says Job. 
This is the development — the filling out or growth 
of the soul. 

We have to minister food to the spiritual 
entity, also, or it will die out by starvation, just 
as the physical body when left without food must 
release its grip upon life. St. Paul has said : 
" As many of you as are baptized in Christ have 



82 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

put on Christ :" The Lord's words work out the 
development: "Unless ye eat the Flesh of the 
Son of Man and drink His Blood ye shall not 
have life in you." 

Men do, indeed, get amazed at their weak- 
nesses, and grumble over what physicians would 
designate by the name of general debility. They 
wonder at their inability to engage with the 
enemy of the soul, in the temptations of life. The 
shame consequent upon their numerous falls 
stings them ; but, disaster, shame and ruin are 
only logical in such cases. These same men 
shun the Communion Table, as if the Blood of 
the Lord were the very antithesis of life, and not, 
as it is, in reality, the very Source of life and 
strength. Such men would never dream of 
denying their bodies food, but they persistently 
forget that the soul as well, stands in need of 
constant and proper nourishment. Can the 
hungry and emaciated beggar fight? Could we 
expect an army of starved men to shoulder 
muskets and go to the front? Can, then, the 
soul, weak, aye, dead from starvation, engage in 
a conflict of salvation? But sometimes we fall 
sick, and disease brings in its train manifold 
infirmities, visible and invisible consequences. 
Now the sacrament of penance comes forward 
with divine authority and skill to meet the fullest 
requirements of our soul, and in response to every 
emergency, lays at our feet the cure of all our 
moral diseases. Fortunately for us, the scope of 
the sacrament is so broad ; thank God ! it is so 



A STUDY IX PENANCE. 83 

universal ; for, alas, various and multiple are the 
diseases that vex the welfare of, and so often 
promise to undermine, the eternal health of 
many of the human family. 

We find two words that convey to us the fullest 
and strongest light on the true and inward char- 
acter and meaning of penance. The first is 
medicine, the second chastisement. One of these 
words will not suffice of itself to express in full 
the character of penance : the two must be 
joined. All that the wise and holy have told us 
on the subject may be traced down to this dual 
root. The two, each distinct in itself, like two 
sides of a hawser, slant upward and meet to form 
support for the plank of penance, in the religious 
system upon which the sick soul reclines for 
treatment. We are not to consider now the 
subject of penance as the fourth sacrament, nor 
as the third and integral part of the sacrament; 
yet, in passing, it might aid us if we remark here 
that the Council of Trent has said in a decree 
that, ' for those who fall into sin after their 
baptism, the sacrament of penance is as necessary 
as baptism itself is for those who have not as yet 
been baptized.' I take penance at this moment 
rather in the sense of a practical spirit, or, as the 
exercise of the virtue of penance. As I take it, 
penance must not be a thing that stands, apart, 
aloof from us, and independent — transitory ; some- 
thing appointed, as it were, for a certain day or 
hour, and ended for the time being ; but, rather, 
as a part of our very selves, and a spirit that 



84 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

never dies but is always acting. It must perme- 
ate us, influence us, overshadow our deliberations 
and the debates that go on in the inner soul, 
influencing our judgments, bearing distinctly 
upon our decisions. It must so be part of us, or 
rather one with us, that we shall not be under 
any constraint of having to pause and ruminate 
to find or recall it. It must form, as it were, the 
very tissue of our nature, which we have from, in, 
and through Christ. We must absorb the spirit, 
as St. Paul absorbed all the virtues of the Chris- 
tian life : "I no longer live, but Jesus Christ 
liveth in me." It must furnish the touchstone of 
the Christian instincts, if I may so speak, and the 
motive power of our higher impulses, which we 
conceive of, in and for God. In one word, pen- 
ance should enter into the very pith and marrow 
of our character. Virtues are like instincts in a 
way. They are inclinations, as by their force we 
lean toward the subject of them and are urged 
forward to embrace them ; and instincts spring 
from our character and nature. The divine prin- 
ciple within us, "Jesus Christ liveth in me," is the 
center of gravity. The laws of faith govern our 
character, and these are the laws of the soul's 
gravity, drawing all things to God. Instinctive- 
ly, we compute, measure, and weigh things by 
this standard — the more readily as the faith is culti- 
vated in us. 

The sacrament of penance is a single act. The 
virtue of penance is a habit, flowing out of our 
character, and an instinct, as it were, of the soul 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 85 

by which man is inclined, and we may say has 
impulses, heaven-born, to sorrow and atonement, 
and hope of mercy. No one dreams of contra- 
dicting the distinctness of the supernatural life of 
faith from the character of our natures, pure and 
simple. Perhaps I need not say that when I speak 
of impulses and instincts in the things supernat- 
ural, I had better speak of them as breathings of 
the divine breath of God upon the soul — as inspir- 
ations and graces. As Christians, we have a 
character of faith, and as sinners we ought to 
have the character of being conscious that we are 
such: the ever-abiding realization that we are 
sinners. — This is the key to penance as a virtue. 
Only Jesus may say : "Which of you will charge 
Me with sin?" Even the priests of God at the 
Mass to-day, in unison with the long line 
of saints who have preceded them, all say it : 
Leo XIII. beats his breast like the least 
amongst us, and in a penitential, humble voice, 
says it : 'Nobis quo que feccatoribus : ' ' and to 
tis sinners, Thy servants, who hope in the multi- 
tude of Thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant a part 
and fellowship with the holy Apostles and the 
rest, through Christ, Our Lord.' I repeat it, 
that we are sinners. "It is a faithful saying, and 
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
into this world to save sinners of whom I am the 
chief," says St. Paul. Hence, the great things 
borne by him, — shipwreck, hunger, nakedness, 
the prison cell. To have spoken the truth as 
'chief of sinners,' he must be chief of penitents. 



86 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

So he was; for, he himself confessed that he 
suffered 'more than all the Apostles.' Here we 
find in St. Paul the due proportion to be observed 
between sin and atonement. 

Penance springs from the idea of sin, and the 
spirit of penance proceeds as from a root out of 
the consciousness that we are sinners. If St. 
Paul had not really felt that he was the great 
sinner he confessed himself to have been ; if he 
had not had in reality that consciousness of his 
being a sinner, he might have complained of his 
great sufferings, as he had complained to the 
Lord of his temptations. 

Man has reason ; he is said to have a rational 
character : This is something distinctive ; a line of 
demarkation in entity. We have reason : The 
brutes have not ; and because they are not 
endowed with reason, we say, it is our character 
as being distinguished from the lower animal 
order, that we are rational beings. "We ought 
to labor strenuously to attain to the interior peace 
of the heart which we call a virtue," says the 
Catechism of Trent. This virtue of penance 
consists in turning to God sincerely, and from the 
heart, and in hating and detesting our past trans- 
gressions with a firm resolution of amendment of 
life and hope to obtain pardon through the 
mercy of God. We should all have the character 
of penance. "Why do you fast?" asks St. 
Chrysostom. "Because you have sinned," is his 
answer. Yes, we are sinners. We ought to feel 
this at every instant of our life. It should, I say, 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. Sj 

be so a part of our character, that in all the 
events of our life it will enter into the very motive 
of our actions — that we are sinners. If we 
would throw open the gates of the mind and be 
convinced of this truth, then the prescriptions 
of our Great Physician could be easily divined by 
us — yes, easily read, though written out in char- 
acters, that to the otherwise untrained and 
unchemical eye seem but a fantastical, incon- 
gruous and grotesque pot-pourri of chance and 
meaningless events, in our life. If, indeed, we 
would only realize that we are sinners, we would, 
with more zeal, and less reluctance, drain off the 
draught which God compounds for us out of the 
pains, the discomforts and the humiliations of our 
daily life, and which is empowered to work our 
healing, to restore to us the health undermined 
by sin, as well as to satisfy the claims which 
justice has upon us. But, alas, we misconstrue 
the blessings of God. As it is with all medicines, 
no one indulges in them for the mere pleasure, 
and until we are made sensible of our needs, 
and that they will confer a good upon us, we will 
keep medicines sedulously under lock and key, so 
no one does penance for the mere pleasure of the 
thing. Only our needs can ever move us on to do 
it ; and oh, can anyone say that he is ever for 
one day dispensed from it? "If a man has once 
sinned he ought to do penance all the rest of his 
life." To have but once sinned, and we have 
earned for ourselves the humiliating title of 
sinner. I have sinned, say I to myself, and now 



88 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

I must be punished ; I must do penance ; I must 
take medicine. The thought tracks me to the 
grave. 

Let us point the camera toward the Councils 
and the Fathers. Ever our guides, these shall 
keep our feet from falling into error. The 
elements that enter into the woof of penance as a 
virtue, or as the cause of a virtue, are unwound 
as follows : " The mercy of God, first prevents us 
and converts our hearts to Him ; illuminated by 
the celestial light, the soul next tends to God by 
faith: A salutary fear of God's judgments 
follows, and the soul contemplating the punish- 
ments that await sin, is recalled from the paths of 
vice. We are animated with a hope of obtaining 
mercy from God, and cheered by this hope we 
resolve on a change of life. Lastly, our hearts 
are inflamed by charity, and hence we conceive 
that filial fear which a dutiful and ingenious child 
experiences toward a parent." Thus speaks the 
Catechism of Trent. These are indeed steps, but 
when we shall have mounted them we shall only 
then observe from our new position that penance 
must embrace punishment or satisfaction. Pen- 
ance differs from satisfaction, pure and simple; 
for penance, as a virtue, is a voluntary punishment 
inflicted on one's self, and is equivalent to satis- 
faction, but it is more than mere satisfaction : It 
is medicine. 

I repeat: we are sinners. I say that we must 
punish ourselves. "Penance," says St. Augustine, 
" draws its name from punishment, because the 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 89 

soul is, thereby, tortured, and the flesh put to 
death." " In penance," says the saint again, 
" everyone should be wise enough to exercise 
due severity, so that after he has been judged by 
himself, he will not have to be judged by God." 
(St. Paul, Cor. xi. 31.) St. Thomas makes 
the following assertion: "Penance, as a pe- 
culiar and particular virtue, means necessarily a 
punishment — of the sinner." 

Among the pagans, penance as a satisfaction 
was not unknown. Before the sweet face of Our 
Lord looked out upon the hills and valleys of 
earth, there had been indeed wise men or 
philosophers, as they were called, who compre- 
hended the justice of this idea of penance to a 
marked extent in sympathy with the theology of 
Rome. St. Thomas builds as much, and as far 
as possible on a foundation of nature. A man 
might indeed argue his unbelief in Christ; he 
can deny revealed doctrines, but he cannot 
repudiate reason. He may not wish to be a 
Christian. Alas, he fancies it to be no shame to 
vaunt that he is not a follower of Christ. But 
this same man would be consumed in the furnace 
of his blushes if one were to cast any aspersion 
on his reason. At any cost, and in the face of 
any consequences, he will not gainsay reason. 
Of course this adhesion to reason, and fidelity to 
its consequences, does not apply to all men, for 
there are religious fanatics, who are, on points 
of religion, verily nothing short of mad. St. 
Thomas, then, I say, wisely rests his theology on 



go AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

the natural principle of right reason, side by side 
with the walls of Faith, when the truth revealed 
does not transcend altogether the plane of the 
human mind, as in the case of the mystery of the 
Holy and Undivided Trinity, where the truth 
must stand exclusively on the Divine Word. 
I might mention the names of Socrates, Plato, 
Diogenes, and others, as fathers of pagan philo- 
sophy ; these men were truly great reasoners, 
whose purity of soul linked to a sharp mental 
acumen brought them the revenue of deep insight 
into natural principles of truth and goodness. God 
sent these men into the world to prepare the way, 
as it were, for Christianity. Theirs was as the 
gray dawn that preceded the day when the Eter- 
nal Sun, the Word of God, rose up, bright and 
red in the eastern heavens on Christmas morn. 
We find among them a sense of justice nothing 
short of marvellous. Ovid, the poet, when speak- 
ing of Pontus, makes him say: "I repent: I do 
penance, and suffer agony for my evil deed." He 
had been guilty of a wrong and his natural sense 
of justice cried out to him for satisfaction and 
atonement for the wrong he had done. Surely, 
his was no senseless suffering, nor futile writhing, 
nor meaningless self-torture, but, one most reason- 
ably presumed to have been dictated and sustained 
by a lofty and a reasonable purpose. Nor was 
it one that concerned the state, but one that 
concerned a creature in his relations with the 
Creator. Thus, atonement for sin, or penance as 
a satisfaction, is dictated by reason. 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 9 1 

In the natural idea of justice, punishment is 
correlative with a personal guilt. Cicero, who was 
himself a strong reasoner and noted logician, as 
one of the most brilliant of those glories that 
cluster round the memory of the ancient forum, 
makes allusion to King Alexander, who had slain 
his bosom friend, Clytus : "It was not without 
much effort," says Cicero, "that he refrained from 
laying violent hands on his own person, so earnest 
was his repentance." Surely we are to take these 
men as rational, and hence their repentance to be 
characterized by a right and noble motive. His 
natural idea of wrong led the king to feel that 
because he was guilty of evil he must needs do 
penance. He felt the need no less than the good 
of satisfaction. Perhaps Alexander's idea of jus- 
tice was so exquisite — for to be overtrained is to 
be weakened, — that to be just, and fully so, his own 
life should atone for his crime : "An eye for an 
eye, a tooth for a tooth." Evidently, he debated 
the idea, and modified his extravagant notion that 
he himself must die in atonement ; yet, although 
he disagreed on the degree of penance, the fact 
outlives all, that sin and punishment go, hand in 
hand, in the pagan mind. But the idea of guilt and 
punishment as correlative is set down, with the 
force of directness and simplicity, as a canon of 
reason, by that wonder and prodigy of the human 
mind, Socrates. "I hold," says he, "that the man 
who does an injustice, or is guilty of a crime, must 
be in every sense of the word, a miserable and 
unhappy man. I maintain that he is the more so 



92 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

in so far as he fails to have rendered a proper 
atonement, undergone a due chastisement, and 
that his bad deeds remain unpunished ; but, I shall 
maintain that the sinner's unhappiness is lessened 
by the fact that he will have borne the just pun- 
ishments of his faults." How then can men, as 
such, repudiate the Catholic spirit contained in 
the doctrine of penance ? They cannot do so with 
any show of consistency without closing up the 
books of ancient, venerable, and respected sages, 
like Socrates, and Aristotle, and, in accordance 
therewith, be pronounced by the judgment of the 
world as beside themselves. 

Tertullian in characteristic language remarks : 
"The one who has resolved upon offering satis- 
faction to God simply by repenting, repents of his 
repentance." Punishment, deeds of satisfaction, 
actions of atonement — the seed of conversion, 
sown in the heart, as expressed by the council 
referred to above, must burst forth from the heart 
into the flower of works of atonement ; for, as faith 
without works is dead, so is the seed of repent- 
ance, that perishes, undeveloped, and fruitless, in 
the bosom of the sinner. 4< Thou hast not left 
unpunished," says St. Augustine to the Lord, "the 
sins of those whom Thou hast pardoned. Thou par- 
donest him who confesses his sin, but, Thou pardon- 
est only according to the measure in which the 
sinner punishes himself. Thus, mercy and justice 
are satisfied ; mercy is satisfied because man is 
delivered out of his sin : Justice is appeased be- 
cause man's sin is punished." (On Psalm 1.) 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 93 

It is in the power of each and every one of us 
to go up at once to the realms of light immedi- 
ately we part with the company of mortals ; but, 
this must be by penance. Penance thus bridges 
over purgatory. We cannot otherwise escape 
the fire. 

When sin is committed, the first law of har- 
mony is punishment. Sorrow for the past, nor 
resolution for the future, nor the two conjointly 
and exclusively, can fulfil the law of penance. 
Charity would accomplish as much ; but, penance 
is sorrow armed with a sword of vengeance 
against the guilty self, to chastise its insolence, 
to give it a lesson that is not liable to be too soon 
forgotten, and to thus effectually deter the soul 
from any future part in the rebellion of sin 
against God, and to excite moreover by the 
punishment a sense of hatred and disesteem of 
self, in view of the fact that it is God's enemy, 
Whose hatred, and his own, man has earned by the 
turpitude of his sin (see Trent). Thus despising 
himself, he proceeds to crush the rebellion and to 
bring about union: "I chastise my body and 
bring it into subjection." 

Self-hatred is life, as the root of all sin is found 
in self-esteem — that leads to all the disasters of 
the soul. The triple end that the penitent has 
in his mind's eye is first, to efface from the soul 
its every spot and stain ; second, to make satis- 
faction to God for the sin which he has committed, 
and this is an act of justice toward God ; third, 
to reinstate himself in the favor and friendship of 



94 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

God, Whom he has offended. St. Gregory the 
Great gives us the idea of penance as a satisfac- 
tion in his own simile: "It is not equivalent to 
paying one's debts simply not to run into new 
ones ; we must, besides, pay off the debts we 
have already contracted." (De Cura pastorale.) 
Now penance besides being a satisfaction, is also 
a medicine. St. Ambrose says that ' penance 
is as necessary as physics to the wounded :' All 
disorders of the body leave after them traces of 
their passage. They unlock the system to the 
friendships of sickness and infirmities : the ice is 
broken. The wounded soldier is more vulnerable 
in the injured joint than formerly. Were it not 
for his wound, he had never become the weather 
prophet that he is, being now able by the pains 
he feels, in the wounded parts, to prognosticate 
unfair weather. St. Bernard tells us, to our com- 
fort, that ' penance is a medicine that expels 
fever, that repairs the powers and restores to 
perfect health.' When we admit sin, the soul is 
pierced as with an arrow of Satan ; we feel the 
pain of the arrow lodged in our soul. Wisely, 
and by that wisdom we have in God, we turn to 
the physician : we go to confession. The con- 
fessor gives us absolution. He draws out the 
arrow. So far, it is well with us ; but, we must 
go still farther, to perfect the work of the tribunal 
of penance, and heal up the wound. Alas, how 
often have the wounded souls scampered off as 
though their wounds had been healed, and the 
whole work of penance accomplished, when 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 95 

absolution had been granted them. But they 
would not have it : the bathing of the wound, the 
painful application of the water and the salve 
were too irksome, if not too painful ; and, so, they 
neglected the nursing of the wound inflicted by 
the arrow of their former sin, and hence the 
moral gangrene, the awful leprosy of the soul 
that consumes all its health and surrenders it 
to the empire of conscienceless perverseness, 
depravity and decay. Hence, that terrible dead- 
ness of men's souls, whereby they eat and 
sleep unmindful of the judgments of God, sus- 
pended over their heads by a meagre thread of life, 
— -like the sword of Damocles, — that the faintest 
zephyr might break, plunging the immortal soul 
into an eternity of direst and unpardonable 
wretchedness. With the body, disease left un- 
checked, wounds and sickness left unnursed : with 
the soul, pious exercises, appointed by the con- 
fessor, for the penitent, a special diet for him, 
special things and occasions to be avoided by 
him, — all neglected, means universal decay. 

It is with the soul, as with the body : a 
disease may be said to be incurable when the 
patient, loathing it, refuses the medicine that 
would accomplish his cure. In the same sense, 
some sins may be said to be incurable — when the 
sinner rejects the grace of God and refuses the 
proper medicine of salvation. The disease is 
not incurable, but it cannot be cured unless the 
confessor's prescriptions are carried out : " Un- 
less ye do penance ye shall all perish." St. 



g6 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Chrysostom tells us this in the simplest way: 
"It is not enough," said the great saint, " to 
draw out the arrow, but we must furthermore 
heal up the wound." The great swellings of the 
sea of wrath, like the mighty throbbings of the 
incensed divinity, have subsided, when the hand 
of the priest stretches forth in absolution over the 
troubled waters of the soul, even as Christ calmed 
with a gesture of His Omnipotent hand the sea- 
king in anger, and brought him to peace and rest ; 
but theologians tell us that these consequences 
survive after the sin has been forgiven by the 
absolution : in God a residue of anger and in- 
dignation, that must be placated ; in the penitent 
a residue of punishment that must be redeemed ; 
and a residue of languor and bad habit to be 
uprooted. These call for the practise of penance 
to placate the anger of God, to liquidate our 
indebtedness to justice, and to rebuild our fallen 
nature, lying in the ruins of soreness and weak- 
ness. And, alas, sin leaves in us a propensity to 
a renewal of its folly. St. Bernard speaks of 
the medicine that casts out the fever, rebuilds 
the energies, and restores us to perfect health. 
St. Bernard was speaking of penance. The full 
function of penance will, then, be, to abolish even 
the scars of our sin, and to hand over to God 
the soul as white and unblemished as before the 
arrow had obtruded itself within its sanctuary — 
fit it for heaven. 

The Fathers assure us that penance takes the 
place of God's justice. It has the prerogative of 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 97 

participation in the commutative justice of God : 
to repair the injury offered to Him by sin, and to 
appease the avenging wrath stirred up in His 
Divine Bosom against us. Tertullian tells us that 
penance 'takes the place of God's anger.' — 'Pro 
Dei indignatione fungitur '.' What a privilege ! 
What a condescension ; what a trust ! We take 
the very place of God. Yet, the value of our 
penance is not from any intrinsic merit of the act, 
but simply because God has willed it, in His 
great love and mercy for man, through the pas- 
sion and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as 
we have the sacrament of penance, so Almighty 
God has, in His merciful, good pleasure, seen fit 
to ordain that we shall have the privilege of 
doing penance, and He ordains that penance 
shall take the place of His own justice. O God ! 
how couldst Thou be so good — so merciful, as to 
impart such value to a human act? 

If we sin, God's justice demands that we shall 
suffer for it ; but, the extent of this suffering is, 
in a way, left to each soul to determine for itself. 
Man's ideas vary with the varying stages of 
his holiness. As we grow in the knowledge of 
God and of ourselves, in purity of life and un- 
selfishness; as we grow — in a word — in holiness, 
we will grow in the fear of God's justice, and pro- 
gress in the virtue of penance. In the lives of 
saints, we find not one but has poured out wells 
of tears and fasted until his sainted body had 
been reduced to a mere collection of bones strung 
loosely together. Was it because these honored 



98 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

men had sinned more than we that they did more 
penances and greater ones ; and did them so much 
the longer? No; but because they were holier, 
and had higher and truer conceptions of their 
obligations to Almighty God. They saw into the 
purity and sanctity of God more clearly than we. 
In the Thirteenth Chapter of St. Luke, we read : 
"And there were present at that very time some 
that told him of the Gallileans, whose blood Pilot 
had mingled with their sacrifices and he answer- 
ing, said to them : Think you that these Gallileans 
were sinners above all the men of Gallilee because 
they suffered such things? I say to you, No. 
But, unless you do penance you shall likewise 
perish." 

We fancy the saints are heroes ; and they are 
so to us, being, indeed, as they are, so far above 
us ; but when we pause to consider, with more 
attention, the sanctity of God, as we catch the 
melodic echo of the heavenly choristers' 'Sanctus! 
Sanctus! Sanctitsl' what we have termed heroism 
fades away into the idea of common justice. I 
defy you to think, there was ever a saint who felt 
that in his austerities and penance he was suffer- 
ing more than his unworthiness deserved. But, 
we, in our pride approve ourselves, though we 
are told by the voice of God, hinting at our 
danger, that only he 'whom God approves is 
really approved.' The pure, white clearness of 
eternal holiness is discerned by us enveloped in 
a robe of haze, for we see it through the inter- 
cepting moral cataract of our own disastrous, 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 99 

perverse, illusive pride and passion. As for our- 
selves, then, if we are holy, or seriously wish 
to be so, we will do more generous penance. 
If, on the contrary, we persist in lacking the 
due comprehension of the sovereign greatness 
and holiness of God, we shall still, in spite of 
all, be forced to pay the debts we owe to 
God, though that payment shall have to be 
made with sore regret, and in a world that is 
yet to come. 

Yes, brethren, the sinner contracts a debt to 
God, and penance is coin, genuine, and of full 
measure and weight, properly stamped with the 
Face of Jesus Christ. — Who shall quarrel with 
His fiat? Who shall dispute His creative power? 
God will accept it. He cannot repudiate it. 
There is no possibility of its demonetization ; 
it is the currency of God's kingdom, sanctioned 
by the Sovereign of the eternal world. It fully 
relieves of all obligation to heaven, here, or 
hereafter, for the damage we have done to the 
dignity of the Almighty, by our sins, and by 
our shocking disregard of His, the Creator's 
rights over His creatures : " Render to Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's, and to God the 
things that are God's." God will sift our works ; 
He will examine the coin as He did in His 
earthly day, the piece of money bearing the 
image and inscription of Caesar. So shall He 
inspect and scrutinize our penances. The coin 
must be genuine, it must bear His own stamp. 
Whose image is this? We answer Him: " Liege 



100 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

of Heaven and of earth, 'tis a work of its own 
nature, painful and laborious, a work done by 
us in faith, and charity, and in the state of 
grace." "Ah, such indeed bears the image of 
Myself," shall the Master say. Such satisfac- 
tions are 'the redeemers', as it were, of sins. (St. 
Cyprian, Lib. I, Ep. 3, Part. Med.) 

It has been said of indulgences that it excites 
the analogy of leaping into the saddle and going 
to heaven, ahorse. We may say of penance, 
that it is a short-cut to glory. " Behold, the 
great priest who hath pleased the Lord, whilst 
he lived, and was found just, and in the time of 
wrath, ready for reconciliation." The Church 
here points her finger to her sainted Pontiff, in 
the capitulum of Lauds : So shall we be found 
just, and in the 'day of anger and of wrath,' we 
shall find an unreserved greeting, if in our day, 
whilst we are on earth, we too shall have 
placated God's justice, that is, done penance. 

We feel the gentle hand of God's mercy in this 
great prerogative bestowed upon the Christian 
family, and, yet, right in the full glare of the fact, 
we are told that full satisfaction is a rare thing 
on earth ; that men seldom do a proper penance 
for their sins. The words of St. Ambrose are 
calculated to make us pause on our way of self- 
complacency and self-delusion, and to halt on 
our path of flowers, to seriously reflect upon our- 
selves, with a view to a different measure of 
penance for ourselves, in the future. The saint 
says : " It is a more common thing to run across 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 101 

persons who have never parted with their bap- 
tismal innocence than to find such as have done 
penance to the full extent." 

For a model in true penance, we can not do 
better than to review the example of St. Mary 
of Egypt. The woman had been, it is true, a 
great sinner, but for many years, she did penance 
for her sins. The years of her marvellous 
atonement outnumber those of her foibles and 
follies. Her zeal for satisfaction outshone her 
passion for wrong, in character and in intensity. 
Living alone, far out in the desert, aloof from 
men, and from all human contact, without food, 
other than the desert yields, and with but shreds 
of raiment, we behold her. Her companions 
were the beasts that roamed in the wilderness. 
At length she was discovered, through the 
providence of God, shortly before her death, by 
a pious solitary, to whom she unbosomed her 
sad but wonderful history — sad, I say, but not 
less joyful ; less guilty than virtuous. Now, after 
all these years, what was her only fear? It was 
not of the beasts, nor of her terrible and lonely 
surroundings : no, her solitary fear was that she 
had yet to stand before the judgment-seat of 
God : "Thou shalt not enter into judgment with 
Thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight no man 
shall be found just." When she thought of this, 
her little remnant of life almost deserted her with 
terror. 

Now for another feature of penance. It is true 
that God's justice must chastise us, but, in pen- 



102 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

ance, it is more the father who chastiseth his son. 
By our sins we have brought sorrow to the Heart of 
God, our Father — ''Father, I have sinned against 
Heaven and before Thee." Let us, then, realize 
fully the necessity of penance so that we may be 
fully reinstated in His friendship. "I am the 
Good Shepherd." What tenderness ! what divine 
feeling ! what immeasurable love ! what soft 
pleading ! No picture inspires such rapture as 
that of Christ, the Good Shepherd, bearing back 
on His shoulders the recreant and fleecy wanderer. 
Let us walk after the adorable penitent, for ' noth- 
ing can appear so unseemly as a delicate member 
under a head crowned with thorns," says St. 
Bernard. He redeemed us once. He carried us 
on His shoulders from the broad plains of sin, 
through baptism, into the Fold ; and He has done 
this without any merit or co-operation on our 
part. Now, let us, if we have wandered away, at 
least be willing to trudge back, grateful for the 
privilege of being able to return, and thankful for 
being led by God's grace back to the Fold — " I 
am the Light." Jesus carried us on His should- 
ers once. Now we must walk — though in His 
mercy He suffers us to lean upon Him. He 
created us without our having any share in the 
work ; but, in salvation it must be otherwise. 
Man must co-operate. 

No scene is more surely calculated to uplift our 
spirits than that of the father of the prodigal 
son. Standing before his window, he sees his 
boy coming home to his father over the hills. 



A STUDY IN PENANCE 103 

Evidently he was looking for him and longing 
for his son's return. He comes ! he comes ! O, 
Jesus, what love, what solicitude ! The father is 
running to meet his penitent boy, worn with his 
wanderings, haggard from dissipation and want, 
returning penitent. Make ready the best room, 
sing, make merry, sound the harps, rejoice, my 
boy, my boy ! O would that the sinner might 
feel the weight of this truth : that the longer his 
journey is away from his father's house, the 
longer must be the journey by which he shall 
retrieve his steps. Yes, step by step — farthing 
for farthing. 

Man falls. It is his plain duty, in the light of 
reason and of faith, to rise up at once out of the 
slough. Sins are not like mud-spots, which had 
better be left to dry and cake, because they are 
the more easily retired, and the stain more easily 
obliterated. Sin is more like the ink-spatter, upon 
which we ought to speedily lay the blotter, and 
which, if left to dry, soaks into the tissues, 
becomes glutinous, and displays itself in a thick, 
black, impervious crust of the most stubborn 
adhesiveness. Let us never grow familiar with sin. 
To the fountain of forgiveness at once ! and if, 
like the ink, attended to, with speed, a mark yet 
remains, like the blotted ink spot, we can at least 
read, beneath the smudge, the sure and comfort- 
ing words of forgiveness, spoken to Magdalen : 
"Thy sins are forgiven thee." 

Had the prodigal said the word sooner: "I 
will rise and will go to to my father," his penance 



104 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

would have been milder. So it is, with men. 
Often they madly hope to blot out misfortune and 
repair the folly of one sin by other and newer 
excesses, when, in reality, they go further and 
further away, and sink deeper and deeper 
into the mire, and lay up new debts and worse 
obligation for themselves against the day of reck- 
oning and wrath. If we have sinned, let us face 
justice at once — we cannot hide from it long. It 
tracks us like a hound, and, if not before, the 
guilty conscience will overtake us at our death- 
bed. 

In the bright glint of the one idea of mercy, 
developed so powerfully, in the touching story of 
the Prodigal Son, we are in danger of losing sight 
of the idea of the penitent's necessary and noble 
part in this parable. "I will arise," said he — "I 
will sin no more." He had humbled himself. This is 
always the prelude to repentance, and repentance 
starts on its way of action when it resolves to re- 
nounce sin. "Father, I have sinned against heaven 
and before thee. I am not worthy to be called thy 
son." So far, his penance is interior. He is, as 
yet, but in the province or at the stage of resolving 
on a course of atonement ; but, he must carry his 
interior plan into execution. Bravely he does so, 
— 'and rising up he went to his father.' He did 
penance ; he walked home, weak and hungry : 
perhaps he begged a ride, now and then, to ease 
his pain, — but say rather, to shift the scene of 
the pain from the sore joint to the sting of the 
heart, by occasionally begging. It was a change 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 105 

for him, though from a lighter one to a heavier 
cross. 

Oh, who knows the fullness of God's love, and 
pity for sinners? No sot, no harlot in the vilest 
slums, no thief — no sinner on earth howsoever 
depraved, but at this moment God will receive 
him back, as the prodigal son. Oh, could the 
righteous be only penetrated by this sublime 
truth ! They would do more to recall the erring 
from their error, and would spend more of the 
time now spent in vacuous and often affected ejac- 
ulations of pity, in more positive and substantial 
efforts with purse and prayer to recall God's 
erring children back to their Father's house, to His 
heart, and to His love. Any sinner has but to 
humble himself, turn about and do a little penance. 
What could better induce us to become penitent 
than to contemplate the effect of the penance on 
the heart of God ? God was so delighted with a 
little penance that as the father of the prodigal He 
could not wait to testify His Fatherly pleasure over 
His son's return: "And when he was yet a great 
way off his father saw him coming and was moved 
with compassion." This is not enough to demon- 
strate the effect of penance on the heart of God. 
Our generosity and willingness to do penance 
induces God furthermore to strike off something of 
our debt : "And running to him fell upon his neck 
and kissed him." And in the bliss of that fond 
embrace the penitent forgot all his pains. 

The father had anticipated the terrible sacrifices 
the son was to make in confessing to him his un- 



IC>6 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

worthiness to be called his son ; for, the chief part 
of penance is the humbling one's-self ; this is the 
crucifixion of the heart. So, he kissed his boy 
and embraced him, to make it easy for him, first 
of all. Here again the father was content with 
half the penance, and cancelled the other half ; for 
the son (Verse xix) had resolved upon adding to 
his confession of filial unworthiness the overwhelm- 
ing mortification of begging of his own father to 
be taken in as a hired servant in the very house 
of his father. The mercy of the father was moved ; 
his heart melted when the son confessed his 
unworthiness to be called his boy. He did not ask 
him to do all the penance ; he did not wait to have 
him say out : "Make me one of thy hired servants." 
The poor penitent had misconstrued the purpose 
of penance, or miscalculated its value ; for, the 
fruit of penance is not degradation ; its motive is 
not hatred but love. It was not the yokel's frock 
that fell to him with penance nor a destiny cast 
with bumpkins. Penance did not make him a ser- 
vant in his father's house, but it merited for him 
'the first robe of honor and the calf of plenty.' 
* Glory and riches are in his house,' and they are 
for each and every man who, first of all humbling 
himself, is in this way brought to do penance : "A 
contrite and humble heart, O God, Thou wilt not 
despise." What is the strange triumph of the 
penitent, that occasions such fervid alleluias in 
heaven ? Tell me, if it be because victory has been 
snatched out of the very jaws of defeat; and Christ 
in a great a race has won over Lucifer, after a death 



A STUDY IN PENANCE. 10/ 

struggle against odds for the prize of the immortal 
soul — wrestling with perhaps trained adversaries, 
robust, educated passions. Is it that the penitent 
has shown the greatest of virtues, in his penance, 
and has won the victory over his own pride, — the 
first and last, and stoutest, the most stubborn and 
crafty of all his foes? To sin, indeed, under the 
motive that sinning would furnish occasion for 
repentance, so that repentance, in turn, would 
occasion joy, could not be anything less than the 
most glaring impiety. Such a principle would 
contravene moral principles, and would be an 
hallucination ; and yet after all, the word of the 
Master must stand : there is no rewarding sin in 
it, and yet it sets before the sinners' eyes who 
repent, glory and honors tremendous and beyond 
measure. Strong word, and mysterious ! I do 
not say that it is preferable to have sinned and 
done penance above having never sinned. I 
could not say such a thing. Our Lord shall 
speak : " I say to you that even so there shall be 
joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance 
more than upon ninety-nine just who need not 
penance." 



108 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 

YOU have now had the Divine Word sown in 
your souls. How will It affect your lives? In a 
spirit of reflection, not in an elated spirit of high- 
mindedness nor in one of speculative enthusiasm, 
let us consider — that is calmly and practically. 
Shall penance affect your life ; will it enter into 
it and give it a new character? Will it be simply 
read by you, or even studied by you, and 
admired by you, — this doctrine of penance, and 
afterward be left behind you in your oratories 
or in this chapel? Will you carry away with 
you the remembrance of it, as a remembrance 
of no effect, a cold recollection, as it were, of 
history or mythology? Shall it be simply a 
beautiful doctrine with you, a euphonic theory, to 
be admitted to your Christian philosophy, and 
thought out and accepted by you in your medita- 
tions, and end there ? Will it be no more than bare 
ecclesiastic knowledge, the knowledge of Chris- 
tian gentlemen and ladies, which is of no practical 
use, and which leaves the heart still the same, 
unchanged? Shall it be simply agreed that you 
must believe it; is it only ecclesiastical etiquette, 
as it were, which demands that you believe in 
penance, in public, and make some manifestation 
of it, during the Lenten season, by absence from 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 109 

tumultuous festivities, and when you come back 
from church — as in the instance of the gentleman 
who takes off his evening-coat — the manifestation 
in public, of this doctrine, is cast out of your 
private life and home? Like the seed of God's 
Word, that it is, does not the doctrine of penance 
fall upon your hearts as seed upon the rock? 
Shall the doctrine, I say to myself, of penance, 
enter into my private life, to give a character to my 
daily doings, to my life personally, my thoughts, 
my affections, my words, and actions? I trust 
so ; and yet, penance is an old doctrine ; it is 
familiar to the world. The Church has taught it 
uninterruptedly since the days of John the Baptist. 
Penance is a familiar doctrine, yet I shall not 
chastise the world by any overwhelming criticism 
on its practice. I can quote, however, with 
propriety, the judgment of a saint, and he no less 
a saint than Ambrose, who says : "There are more 
persons who have preserved their baptismal 
innocence than people who, having lost their 
innocence, have done the proper and becoming 
penance." Yes, brethren, it was ever so. The 
multitudes now, like the Jews of old, ' having ears 
hear not.' You perform the penance laid upon 
you by the priest in the sacrament of penance — 
this of course is one of the conditions that assure 
the validity of the sacraments; but on the general 
principle of the virtue, which guarantees our per- 
severance in goodness and the perpetuation of the 
good effects of the sacrament, by building up the 
constitution, we do nothing, or little ; for, the sacra- 



IIO AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

ment is one thing and the virtue of penance quite 
another. To impress upon you the actuality 
of this difference, and furthermore the necessity 
of having and of cultivating the virtue of penance, 
I might ask : How long does the effect of the 
sacraments linger in you? Is it not only till the 
sparrow comes and devours the seed, or the first 
gust of wind to whirl it off? Your penance is on 
the surface ; it has not sunken down into your 
heart to take root, there, and to grow up and 
fructify. If I said few of you have done penance, 
I would be assuming the posture of a critic, and 
verily I would shrink from such an attitude ; yet do 
not flatter yourselves that you are different from 
the Christians of the past. Sin drugs the soul ; 
so, the world has been in a comatose state : Why, 
yes, the world has been in a torpor for ages ! We 
have eyes, we seem to see, but we see not. Now 
it behooves us to rouse ourselves from this old 
lethargy, from this comatose state ; for to have 
simply known the doctrine of penance ; to have 
been blessed with a knowledge of our duty, in 
this respect, will only be another witness against 
us, a new grace squandered, one talent more 
buried in the earth ! 

Look at the record of all the sacraments 
you have received from the day your sins were 
absolved for the first time ! What fruits have 
they brought forth? This is a practical question, 
and it ought to appeal to you as precisely as that 
two and two make four. What is the result, on 
your life, of these sacraments? What is the 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 1 1 I 

difference between some Catholics and Protestants? 
Nought. This proves to us that there is something 
defective. Christ, God's eternal Son, sanctified 
the world ; He has left us the sacrament of pen- 
ance ; He has left us His Own Body and Blood ; 
and the sacraments were instituted by Jesus 
Christ to confer the graces we need. Yet, I ask 
again, do you see all Catholics acting differently 
to Protestants? Are some of you not like the 
rest of the world — wicked in practise, unexem- 
plary, and not doers of penance? 

No, it is not that the sacraments are defective : 
the Blood of Jesus Christ is all-powerful to 
sanctify us : the words of Our Lord have been 
efficacious of themselves. The sacraments of the 
Church should make us saints. Why is it not 
so with some? I can answer in the words of St. 
Augustine, when he says : " In the satisfaction 
for grievous sins, not words only, but works, are 
looked for ; tears, sighs, alms and long-continued 
fasts are to be added to our prayers." I can 
answer you again in the words of other saints, 
as, for example, in the bold words of St. Gregory. 

Such language ought to make us tremble when 
we see the little results from the sacraments in 
our lives ; sacraments destined and ordained to 
make us holy, as our Heavenly Father is holy ; 
for, it shows us a defectiveness, and where alone 
the source of it lies in the sacramental processes. 
St. Gregory tells us : "Our confessions are of no 
avail unless we assume the labor of penance ; and, 
furthermore, we cannot look upon anyone as being 



112 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

truly and sincerely converted unless he will 
struggle to wash out his sins, by the proper 
painful austerities." 

We must copy the life of the early Christians, 
and cultivate the spirit of the saints of God. 
After their confession there was a long siege of 
self-annihilation, scourgings, lamentations, tears 
and fasts. Shall you be among the great multi- 
tude that will not do penance? Shall you stand 
with the many — barren fig-trees ? St. John, when 
he came to preach penance, said : "For now the 
axe is laid to the root of the tree. Every tree, 
therefore, that bringeth not forth good fruit shall 
be cut down and cast into the fire." What fruits, 
you ask, shall we bring forth? "Fruits worthy 
of penance," is John's answer to this question. 
"Bring forth fruits worthy of penance." 

"We must," says St. Gregory, "take notice that 
the friend of the Spouse admonishes us, not only 
to bring forth fruits of penance, but to show fruits 
worthy of penance. It is one thing to produce 
the fruit of penance, and quite another thing to 
show fruits worthy of penance, — for example : 
If one has not done anything wrong, illicit, he 
may indulge in licit things ; but, if one has com- 
mitted fornication, or, what is worse, adultery, he 
must abstain from licit, lawful things, to the 
measure in which he has indulged himself in 
unlawful things." (Brev. Homily, iv. Sunday of 
Advent.) A fruit tree without fruit is a thing 
without a purpose ; it has no place in existence. 
A fruit tree without fruit is a reproach to the 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. I I 3 

orchard, a standing aspersion upon the labor of 
the husbandman, who will cut it down and burn 
it. Have you brought forth any fruits of pen- 
ance in your lives? How many times will Our 
Lord come in the autumn, looking anxiously, 
seeking for fruit? — How often come to us, and 
finding our branches fruitless, still tolerate us in 
His orchard? Christ finds our souls like barren 
fig-trees, with no solid virtues ; only the barren 
semblances of piety ; the leaves that cover no 
fruits of solid virtue. The Lord was hungry, but 
it was for souls. It is the fig-tree He seeks, and 
He seeks good fruit — the fruit of the glory we 
ought to give Him. How long will Almighty 
God endure us? How long will He come to our 
souls, in the missions we make, in the Com- 
munions we receive? We have seen in our self- 
examinations, that up to this time we have been 
barren. Will He come again to us and say: 'I 
will give you another opportunity?' How long 
will He endure us, bringing forth no fruit : giving 
us His Body and Blood, and no fruits to show 
the Divine Husbandman — the tree is yet sterile? 
We do not repay the Husbandman's care ; how 
long will Almighty God endure it, before He 
shall say: "Cut it down and cast it into the fire?" 
A barren fruit tree, I say again, is a reproach to 
the orchard, and it should be cut down. A 
man is useless when he brings forth no fruit in 
his soul. Our Divine Lord will some dav, if we 
exhaust the allotted measure of His mercy to us, 
pronounce the same judgment on our soul as 



114 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

He did on the fig-tree. God gives the formal 
sentence to the damned soul on one occasion, in 
prose, when He says : " Depart from Me, ye 
cursed, into everlasting fire," but He is the 
Divine Poet, so to speak, when He addresses 
the lost soul and consigns it to dark futurity, 
under the simile of the fig-tree, wherein He says : 
" May no fruit grow on thee henceforth forever." 
In the prose sentence, God simply pronounces 
the judgment, but in the breadth and depth of 
the poetical condemnation, the sentence contains 
the cause — " No fruit ! " Yes, God has been 
looking for fruit ; He has been waiting for it ; 
He has been anxious for it ; He has thirsted for 
it. No fruit has been forthcoming. Why should 
God let the tree stand? Brethren, Ad quid 
venisti f — why are we in this world ? 

Our penance should be of the proper character. 
It should be severe. No penance, however, 
ought to be considered in reality severe, for it 
means — salvation ! It means the ' one thing 
necessary/ If the damned souls could but 
return to 'the way,' no possible temporal afflic- 
tion would be, in their judgment, less than 
extravagant indulgence on the part of God, in 
placing heavenly glory at such a low cost. 
Penances, objectively, are not severe : the severity 
is subjective. In reality they are not more than 
our sins have indeed merited. So, let us, in our 
penances, observe a proper severity. Let us not 
fancy that, because God is merciful, we have not 
to do penance. It is the law of the Church, and 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 11$ 

though the discipline of the Church is softened to 
suit climatic and social conditions, penance is as 
essential to-day as it was in the day of canonical 
penance. We should despise and rebuke sin as 
much as God does, and when I speak thus, I 
speak of penance. I say, the life of a man who 
has once lost, by a mortal sin, the justice, to 
which he had been born by baptism, ought to be 
a life of unceasing penance. If the multifarious 
duties of mankind will not allow us to perform 
formal penance, we must still have the spirit of 
penance. The Apostle says : " Pray always," 
though it is the spirit of prayer to which he 
alludes. If once we have sinned, there ought to 
be, far down in our souls, a silent, underlying 
principle emanating from the conviction that we 
have sinned against the law. The remembrances 
of our ingratitudes to God, a deep humility, and 
a sincere hatred toward ourselves, like the spirit 
of prayer, should influence, permeate and charac- 
terize all our actions, and furnish the chief motive 
of many of them, just as that unconscious con- 
sciousness of our own helplessness and the need of 
God's assistance, momentarily, form the laws of 
spiritual gravitation, governing and silently draw- 
ing to God all that we do, say, or think, as to a 
center — which constitutes the spirit of prayer. 

There are many things that could be said in 
relation to the severity of our penance. We ought 
to bring forth fruits worthy of penance. What do 
we mean by this ? Not any sort of fruit will do — 
the fruits should be worthy. St. Augustine says : 



Il6 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

"I shall tell you what I know to be a salutary 
penance : we must put to death our flesh ; we 
must so mortify ourselves that we shall be made 
tame. Passions must be mortified. For the 
sake of salvation we must accept all these afflic- 
tions which come down to us from the hands of 
God." St. Cyprian says: "Our sighs and tears 
should be in keeping with our sins ; to the deeper 
wounds salutary remedies must be applied, and in 
no case must the penance be less than the sin." 
The internal law of the Church, or the spirit, is the 
same. The relaxation is only in the discipline. 
At present there is only enough to make up the 
validity in the sacrament. The performance of 
proper penance is a matter that lies between God 
and your own soul : do it and live, neglect it and 
die. 

Penance is not easy. From the various names 
the Fathers of the Church have bestowed on 
penance, we deduce the idea of labor. It has 
been called a 'laborious baptism.' It is the second 
baptism, as the first is the baptism of water, — "And 
He came into all the country about the Jordan, 
preaching the baptism of penance" (Luke iii.) 
When you are baptized you become as white as 
the Alpine snows — not a mark, not a semblance of 
a scar, not a discoloration is observable. When 
you were baptized this whiteness came upon your 
soul ; when you sinned you lost this purity. Now 
you must regain it, and it is not so easy a process 
as to be baptized by water. The first was easy ; 
there was no penance to be done then ; but, now, 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 117 

we have penance to do in order to recover this 
innocence : we have to receive another baptism. 
Where is the fountain that contains the water that 
will make us innocent again? Lo ! the foun- 
tains — these two eyes. Yes, these eyes are the 
fountains, whose waters spring from the heart 
within, broken with sorrow, melted into penance. 
And the salt which the priest puts on the tongue 
of the infant, becomes, in penance, the bread of 
human affliction and penitential sorrow. This is 
a second baptism. 

Penance here contains the idea of labor. Some 
of the Fathers of the Church express penance by 
a terrible word : they call it a temporal hell. 
This, truly, is a fierce word. The hell hereafter 
is perfect retribution ; it is justice, and it shall not 
end. Here the temporal hell will end. Penance 
is a hell that shall save us. The drunkard cannot 
endure his thirst, nor the libertine his temptation 
to lust ; how will they endure the cravings that 
will be their punishment in the everlasting misery 
of hell? Penance is called a salutary Gehenna, a 
plank after the shipwreck. Do not these names 
imply labor? A laborious baptism means tears : it 
means the endurance of hardships. When shall 
the mariner, whose ship has been wrecked, let go 
the plank? Only when he shall have reached the 
shore. So with penance, as long as we live there 
should be no respite from it. To do penance we 
require, indeed, the courage of the man who is in 
mid-ocean, the survivor of a wrecked crew, cling- 
ing to a plank and buffeted by the waves. 



Il8 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

The spirit of penance must dominate our entire 
life. We shall work as penitents, and by the 
sweat of our brow we shall earn the bread of 
immortality. When will our penance end? 
When the evening bell calls the laborer from the 
field, and the shadows of death are on ; only he 
that « shall have persevered to the end shall 
be saved.' Now, I trust your penance will be 
commensurate with the gravity, the number and 
the character of your sins. Remember this law 
of justice, and observe it. 

Now before we diagnose the various penances, 
set down for us, it would be wise to lay open a 
few preliminary notions anent the subject of 
merit. Good works have a two-fold character. 
They may be of impetration, or the obtaining of 
what is commonly understood as the object of 
prayer ; that is to say, anything we stand in need 
of. Again, they may have a satisfactorial character, 
as when they have the power of paying up for 
the sins we have committed, — that is, of satisfying 
for them. There are two kinds of merit; — de 
condigno — to use the language of the schools — by 
which good works done for God, are rewarded by 
Him in justice, as established on God's promises 
of reward. The origin and force of this reward 
are based upon the promise, but the promise itself 
is gratuitous. St. Augustine says God is our 
debtor: "Thou owest me because Thou hast 
promised me." Though God must reward us, it 
is only because He has promised of His Own 
mercy and bounty, and, so to speak, free will. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 119 

The second kind of merit theologians call de con- 
gruo ; wherein God is not obliged to reward by 
dint of any promise, but does so because He 
chooses, by a sort of generosity or civility. It is 
the gift of compliment, whereby God rewards our 
good works. This is essential for you to know ; 
but we will restrict the application of these 
principles to our subject of penance. The 
Church tells us that in order to satisfy for our 
sins, we ought to be in a ' state of grace.' In 
order, I repeat, to satisfy God for sin we must 
be in a state of sanctifying grace, and the works 
done must be such as are in their own nature, of 
a 'laborious' or 'painful' character. St. Cyprian 
assures us, such satisfactory works are the 're- 
deemers,' as it were, of sin. We ought to be in 
a state of sanctifying grace, I say, if we want to 
atone for our sins. God is then obliged to give 
us a reward, but, although we can thus satisfy 
for our sins, there are times, however, when God 
does not accept our works as satisfactorial. I say, 
God is obliged, though He is not at all times 
under obligation so to do. When David sinned 
God would accept no penance from him, but 
insisted on the one punishment, namely, that 
of the death of his son. God decreed a certain 
punishment. David said : "I shall fast and I shall 
pray, and perhaps God will yet relent and spare 
the boy." God was inexorable. He would not 
accept anything but what His justice decreed. 
The Council of Trent teaches, not only the works 
of penance, voluntarily assumed, satisfy for our 



120 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

sins, but, all afflictions that come to us, when 
patiently borne, become endowed with the power 
to satisfy the Father through Jesus Christ. As 
a general rule, when we accomplish any work 
in satisfaction for our sins, God accepts these 
works we offer, and we can offer satisfaction not 
only for our own sins, but for the sins of 
others ; for, it is our privilege, according to the 
consoling doctrine of the communion of saints, 
that we may satisfy even for others. This is, says 
Suarez, according to the law of friendship. " I 
will not call you servants now, but friends." But, 
what we merit for ourselves in justice, or de con- 
digno, we merit for others only as compliment, 
or favor — de congruo. Now, if it should ever be 
our misfortune to lose the state of grace, we should 
speedily make an act of perfect contrition, so as 
to regain, as speedily as possible, the privileges 
of grace. One who is not in the state of grace 
and friendship with God may receive graces from 
God, but he cannot satisfy for his own sins nor 
for those of others. To say otherwise, would be 
a flat contradiction. One who is God's enemy ; 
upon whom God looks with displeasure ; whose 
soul is made loathsome and freighted with the 
weight of mortal sin, cannot, consistently, 
satisfy for sin. Such a one has lost favor 
at court. God will accept no satisfaction from 
him. Our holy Church tells us that all satisfac- 
tions are embraced under three heads — ' Prayer/ 
'fasting' and 'almsdeeds.' St. John, the Apostle, 
informs us that whatever is evil on this earth, is 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 121 

from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or 
the pride of life. Let us look into the mutual 
relations of these three, that is, the satisfactions 
specified by Trent and the three great sins 
indicated by St. John. John diagnoses the dis- 
order : He says : " Pride of life." The Church 
says you must pray — Here is the antidote. 

This pride of life the Church corrects and 
cures by prayer. John declares a man to have 
'the lust of the flesh; ' the Church says to such a 
one, 'fast, deny the flesh, kill it.' John says: 
"Lust of the eyes," a man who loves money: he 
covets wealth, he hordes it — it is a passion; and 
the Church says to him : ' give to the poor — to 
reduce the fever, and thus overcome.' These are 
the three chief heads, and under these all pen- 
ances are embraced. No matter what the penance 
may be, at the root of its character will be found 
one of these three things, prayer, fasting or 
almsdeeds. Let us remember, then, how, for 
example, the rich man, Iscariot, the avaricious 
one, carries his sack of gold as the camel does 
his hump ; and, as the camel cannot pass through 
the eye of a needle, no more can the rich man, 
unless he disencumbers himself of his gold, enter 
through the gateway of the kingdom of heaven. 
Yes, the superfluous fleece must be shorn, by 
kindness to the poor, if the rich man will become 
a ' lamb of God. ' 

" Let him that has two coats give to him that 
has none, and thus will the lust of the eyes be 
subdued by penance." To subdue the lust of the 



122 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

flesh the Church says, imperatively, « fast ! ' For 
every evil thought, for every evil act of mind, or 
action of body, be it of tongue, of eye, or of any 
other sense, — for all, fast, deny, abstain, in order 
to correct, repair and cure. Abstaining from 
food is not the only kind of fasting, then. If the 
eyes have beheld anything obnoxious, deny them 
some pleasant sight, turn them away from some 
pleasant scene ; shut up your ears from some 
pleasurable sound of music ; punish the garrulous 
and ribald tongue by silence, or force upon it 
some edifying word, to atone for the wicked, 
immodest, or frivolous things it uttered. Fasting 
is not restricted to the stomach; we must fast 
from the passions, abstaining with the eyes, ears, 
tongue, and all the ' members ' of the body, be- 
cause they have all conspired to bring sin into 
the soul ; you can abstain with the ears, abstain 
with the tongue ; and this is all embraced in the 
word ' fast ! ' For the pride of life, the Church 
commands us to pray, and prayer which the 
Church lays down for us will most surely an- 
tithesize this pride of life that is in us. How 
many of you have yielded to this pride of life? 
How many of you lack the proper degree of 
humility? Be candid. How many of you have 
not fancied you ought to be in a higher station 
or degree in life? You are uneasy and restless 
from ambition : the love of honor and of distinc- 
tion that consumes the typical worldling, burns 
brightly in your hearts. The Church says : * Put 
out this fire with prayer. Pour upon the flames 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 1 23 

fervid supplications to God. Be humble in your 
station, and in the degree within your station.' 
The three lusts, the lust of the eyes, the lust of 
the flesh, and the pride of life, are personified 
thus : The lust of the eyes by Judas, who coveted 
gain, the lust of the flesh by Dives, who feasted 
highly on rich viands, and the pride of life by 
Lucifer, who looked with covetous eye upon the 
very throne of the Divinity. If you have made 
up your mind to do penance, you ought to know 
your own character ; you ought to know whether 
it is pride, or the lust of the flesh, or of the eyes, 
that you have to overcome. Whatever it may be, 
the Church has pointed out to you the means 
of penance, to which God will attach the grace 
that will enable you to succeed in overcoming 
yourselves. 

Life is a warfare. We have enemies on every 
side. Where is our weak point? Strengthen it. 
It is possible that we would bestow special care 
upon parts that do not warrant by their condition 
or character any special solicitude. There are 
persons, for example, who boast of temperance, 
but have such no weak point at all ! Are they 
not, perhaps, uncharitable to the weaker brother? 
It is said that we all live in glass houses. This, 
in a way, is true, but methinks it would be more 
correct to say that each one of us lives in a house 
of clay, with some part of the wall made of glass. 
That is to say, no man is strong in any of his 
nature — 'the flesh is weak' — ' all flesh is grass,' 
but each one is especially weak on some fixed 



124 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

point, in the part, namely, where the wall is of 
glass. Here is where we must barricade our 
wall. 

To know accurately our character and to ascer- 
tain precisely, and without danger of error, what 
shall be our chief moral danger in life, it is wise 
to consult with a learned and prudent confessor 
to locate our weak point, lest we, misjudging our- 
selves, misapply our energies, and, as it were, 
waste our forces. Our religious development 
and evolution will then be a solid and true 
growth in holiness. Our efforts will be scientific, 
so to speak, and not left to uncertainty or 
chance. On the contrary, every blow struck for 
salvation will be judiciously directed and of telling 
effect. We shall not be beating the air. 

In the terrible fall of Babylon so powerfully 
depicted by St. John in the Apocalypse, we may 
read the fall of the soul: "Babylon the great is 
fallen, is fallen." Here is the deplorable fact, 
the recital of the awful calamity, the avowal of 
the most disastrous event possible to man — the 
fall of the immortal soul from the realms of grace; 
its lamentable passing out from the delights of 
God, its loss of the privileges and the glory of 
God's friendship and favor, with the immense con- 
sequent share in the graces and benefits of the 
circle of God's beloved in heaven and on earth 
which emanates from the laws of the communion 
of saints. Meetly, indeed, might the angels cry 
out in the eloquence of regret and sympathy : 
i Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen.' What a 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 1 25 

tremendous force is revealed in the repetition 
of the catastrophe ; what an unspeakable mis- 
fortune — is fallen ! is fallen ! 

To what a state has the soul come down. It. 
has become the 'habitation of devils and the hold 
of every unclean spirit' (Apoc. xviii. 22). The 
peace and joy of God have forsaken her with the 
sweet interchange of love with the Lord and His 
angels and saints ; and the soft whisperings of 
affection divine are no more — ' the voice of 
harpers and of musicians and of them that play 
on the pipe and on the trumpet shall no more be 
heard in thee.' (Apoc. xxiii. 22). 

Who can measure the evil results of a fall of 
the soul, when the fruits of all our virtuous toils 
perish in an instant — "And the fruits of the desire 
of thy soul are departed from thee and all the fat 
and goodly things are perished from thee." 
(v. 14). 

It is true that the glimmer of reason still lights 
up our way, but the supernatural light is shut out 
from us. The grace of Him Who is the * Light 
of the World ' has departed — "And the light of 
the lamp shall shine no more at all in thee, and 
the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall 
be heard no more at all in thee." (v. 23.) 

Saints bewail the overthrow of the soul. Before 
the tabernacle and the crucifix they sigh and 
lament over it — " Alas ! Alas ! that great city 
which was clothed with fine linen and purple and 
scarlet, and was gilt with gold and precious stones 
and pearls. For in one hour are so great riches 



126 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

come to nought." (v. 16, 17.) Yes, all our past 
merits are come to nought. In natural calamities, 
men ponder over their losses and when they 
realize the situation, they are cast down because 
the loss is irretrievable. How, indeed, they would 
wish to regain their property and rebuild their 
ruined fortunes, but how often all this is 
beyond hope ! 

Such a dilemma is never possible in the life of 
the soul. If disaster overtake one, and the moral 
fortune is laid in ruin, the catastrophe may always 
be repaired. The turning of the heart from evil 
back to God is equivalent to setting up again 
the ruined foundation of our spiritual condition 
and fortune, or to be plain, the restoration of our 
credit with God and its collateral privileges of 
drawing graces from heaven ad libitum and ad in- 
finitttm; and the farther development or rebuilding 
up thereon, in other words, complete restoration 
of our former position lost through sin, will be 
accomplished, sooner or later, but infallibly 
accomplished by penance. The Apostle points 
out the way. Beneath the clusters of Easter lilies 
and the scented masses of white roses, the road of 
penance that makes for 'the mountain of the Lord' 
lies open. It is never closed — blessed path trodden 
by Jesus, John, and the saints. In the very midst 
of her paschal joys the Church, in the Holy Sacri- 
fice of Tuesday, and in the Mass of Wednesday, in 
Easter Week, recalls the words indicating the hard 
road cutting through the Paschal bower. "Do 
penance and be converted." (Acts, iii) 



THE INFLUENCE OF PENANCE. 1 27 

The first step in penance is conversion. Seek 
first of all forgiveness of God, by a perfect contri- 
tion, the very instant you realize the dreadful 
calamity of grievous sin, and, as soon as possible 
confess, and be absolved by the minister of God. 
Here is the foundation. How shall we rebuild up 
the soul? We have answered this question above, 
but we will borrow and adapt the words of St. 
John to deepen the impression whilst we refresh 
an important memory. " Render to her as she 
also hath rendered to you, and double unto her 
double according to her works : in the cup, where- 
in she hath mingled, mingle ye double with her. 
As much as she hath glorified herself and lived 
on delicacies, so much the more torment and sorrow 
give ye to her." (Apoc. xviii. 6, 7.) 

The soul that does penance, in the sense of being 
converted, occasions that greater joy in heaven. 
The putting off the works of darkness and resuming 
the white robe of baptism, is the adorning the 
soul, which is the bride of the Lamb for the wed- 
ding-feast. Penance as a conversion of the soul 
stirs up the Alleluias, but the soul herself will not 
hear this rejoicing till she is rebuilt up, or the 
satisfactions are accomplished — purified and justi- 
fied : "And I heard as it were the voice of a great 
multitude, and as the voice of many waters, 
and as the voice of great thunders, saying : 
'Alleluia.' . . . Let us be glad and rejoice ; 
and give glory to Him : for the marriage of the 
Lamb is come and His wife hath prepared her- 
self. And it is granted to her that she should 



128 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

clothe herself with fine linen glittering and white. 
For the fine linen are the justifications of saints." 
(Apoc. xix. 6, 7, 8.) 

By grievous sin the soul is put to death. Is 
this your condition, or shall it ever be so ? Know 
that to enjoy resurrection, to glory with the Lord 
and His chosen, the soul must first rise from the 
tomb of sin. Be convinced that the grace which 
works this wonder is clearly and exclusively 
penance — ''Blessed and holy is he that hath part 
in the first resurrection." (Apoc. xx. 6.) May the 
Master grant us all the spirit of the desert — the 
grace of penance. 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 120, 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 

The blood-thirstiness and the subterfuges of 
the Jewish priests, with the witnesses maliciously 
suborned to forge testimony against Jesus, the 
trumped-up charge, the treason of Judas, the 
fiendish, panting thirst for the blood of their 
Divine Master, which bedevilled the house of 
Israel which He came to save, the plots to en- 
trap the innocent Son of God and involve Him 
in the meshes of conspiracy against the civil 
authority, and the final murder of the God-Man, 
constitute the elements of our subject, — the 
Tragedy of Redemption. To-day we will simply 
and briefly rehearse the action of the tragedy, 
later the climax, and the denouement. 

It is desirable that your attention should rest 
upon the theological features of this subject. 
You, of course, are familiar with the ideas, 
though they have not made much of an impres- 
sion on you. But I call your special attention, 
now, to the commanding fact that Jesus Christ, 
God's eternal Son, is the world's Hero and Sav- 
iour. I invite you to weigh well the consequence 
of this sublime fact; namely, that were it not 
for His Divine Charity no man would ever be 
blessed with immortal happiness. The doors of 
heaven must, forsooth, be shut and barred against 



130 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

the children of men forever. This simple truth 
and fact would be enough to draw us into seclu- 
sion, to bring us out with Ignatius to the cave, 
there to spend the rest of our days in meditating 
upon the charity of heaven. To fully under- 
stand this subject, we have, by way of prelude, 
to unveil the condition of Adam before the fall, 
as it touched upon the faculties of his soul, and 
the powers of his senses. Adam, before he 
broke the commandment, — in which consisted 
his religion and test, — possessed an intellect so 
bright that he could read with unstrained eye, 
every message from the sovereign mind of God 
clearly. There were no clouds browsing in his 
moral sky ; nay, not a fleck in the firmament, 
not a beam was there, dancing in the eternal 
sun : the light of heaven poured down upon his 
soul freely, copiously, and purely. There was 
no such word, then, in his lexicon, as doubt. He 
saw clearly, I say, what God willed him to do, 
and in his own will there flourished, moreover, 
that control and domination complete that be- 
longs to the ideal faculty. His will held the 
mastery over all his thoughts and actions. Adam, 
like David, could say, — ' The Lord ruleth over 
me ; ' but David could never say what Adam 
could say besides: I rule the world. Over his 
soul was spread the peace of a summer evening — 
no disquiet: All was calm — not a ripple, not an 
anxiety. In that unimpassioned stillness, in that 
blissful tranquillity, in that unruffled lake of his 
soul God was visible as in a mirror. He was so 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 131 

pure and bright in his entity that he reflected the 
very splendors of God about him, as in the un- 
troubled lake we see the skies reflected : " Let 
us make man to our own image and likeness." 
There was everything of luxuriance in the field ; 
loveliest flowers, fruits of richest nectar, trees of 
shapely beauty — everything in abundance and 
variety, to make him glad and contented in his 
earthly home. God had set him in a paradise of 
pleasure. He had control of the sea ; he modu- 
lated the speed of the birds ; the fishes of the 
deep gave him subjection ; all was beneath the 
sway of his will — he was monarch of all he 
surveyed. Every creature of earth, of water and 
of sky tamely fulfilled his commands. God 
made him king. The harmony of heaven's first 
law flooded the soul of sceptred man, affording 
a royal pleasure and a comfort worthy of the 
monarch of all the earth. But Adam fell into 
sin, and in an instant there was a revulsion : 
anarchy was at that very moment born into the 
world : disorder supplanted order. There was a 
rebellion in creation and in nature. Now the 
lion claims the forest for his own, and refuses 
the obedience he had so mutely and swiftly given 
to Adam, the King. The mighty whale, the 
leviathan of the deep, spouts opprobrious con- 
tempt and defiance at man. The eagle owes 
him no further obedience. Everything is beyond 
his control : there is, in truth, anarchy widespread. 
The body declines to obey the commands of the 
will, as the will declines to follow the leading of 



132 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

the mind. What a change in the great state of 
that monarch ! What a state, what a throne, 
what a sceptre he flung away ! You must con- 
sider Adam in this dire condition — a spectacle 
of misery ; there, in a nook of the garden, 
crouching from the angry face of God, nursing 
in his bosom new thoughts of wrong; morally 
deaf, dumb and blind ; struck down with a 
paralysis in all his free and noble faculties, 
the quondam king, ruled himself, now, — by a 
tyrant ! See him overwhelmed with dismal dis- 
grace, the accursed of the Most-High — the 
grand work of human creation a lamentable 
failure ! Under this doom, Adam, the ruler, is 
bound a prisoner in chains. He was a monarch, 
but now — a serf, a captive, a condemned and 
hunted criminal ! Instead of worshipping God — 
in lieu of exercising control — Adam loves the 
very chains that bind him to his prison ; the pas- 
sions of his own rebellious heart are the divini- 
ties he now worships. The veil of the ancient 
temple is rent in twain. The light of God's 
grace has gone out from him, as, when the Son 
of God was crucified, there came an eclipse in 
the physical world, and all the light of the sun 
fled from the guilty world. God gave man the 
liberty of obeying or disobeying the law. Man 
has this right — right, say I? nay, not the right, 
exactly, but the liberty, of burying the dagger's 
keen point in his own heart. He can become a 
suicide, but can he recall the life that he has 
driven from his body? This no man can do by 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 1 33 

his own power. In vain would science by its 
ingenuity and its progressive comprehension of 
electrical agencies, restore to the dead man the 
principle of life that is quenched in him. Adam 
is a moral suicide ; he expelled the life of God 
that was in him. He has laid violent hands upon 
his own soul, but he cannot restore that moral 
life he took. This leads us, then, to an import- 
ant fact: Adam has sinned against God and now 
he must perish forever — he is dead to God. I 
am sure that few of us, if any, realize the extent 
of the consequences of that dreadfull fall. Few 
realize this fact, that it meant universal death. 
All do not realize it, though true it is, that when 
Adam sinned all his descendants fell with him ; 
that after him death was to come upon all men. 
As in him all men shall have sinned. St. Paul 
tells us that ' as by one man came death, so by 
one Man came the resurrection. As by one man 
sin entered into the world, so by one Man has 
justice come into the world.' Adam could not 
plead lack of foresight to avert the consequences 
of his sin, for Almighty God had said : " In 
whatsoever day thou shalt eat, thou shalt die the 
death." The Lord addressed him as the father 
and root of the whole human family. In that 
contract he made pledges for us, whereby we all 
promised that in case that fruit should be eaten 
we would all perish : " As by one man sin hath 
entered into the world, and by sin death, so death 
passed unto all men in whom all have sinned," 
says St. Paul. 



134 AM I 0F THE CHOSEN. 

There always exists between the humblest 
peasant, in his gray and sunburnt jerkin, and the 
mightiest monarch in his purple ; between the 
meanest scambler and the most honorable gen- 
tleman, or polished of men, some proportion. 
They have a common origin, nature and end, a 
kindred misery in life ; and, for both, there is the 
grave. They have always something in common, 
I aver, so that if the lowest of men were to offer 
an affront to the highest of men, no matter what 
might otherwise be the disparity, there would be 
still a substantial parity and proportion betwixt 
them; whereas between God and man there is 
such a vast innniteness of space ; God is so far 
distant from man ; the chasm that yawns between 
the Divinity and mortal is so broad, that no 
mortal could ever span it. So, when man had 
once sinned, by the very essence of his nature, 
he was radically incapable of offering to God a 
condign or consistent atonement for the wrong 
he had done. To make due reparation, then, for 
the injury, and to be reconciled once more to his 
Creator was not within the compass of man's 
simple power. Sin had paralyzed him. What 
likeness or proportion could there be between the 
All-Powerful, All-Holy God and man, feeble man, 
' dust and ashes ? ' This is the theological basis of 
the Divine mercy shown in the redemption, as well 
as the key to the profound gratitude which the 
idea of the redemption should awaken in the 
hearts of Christians. Yes, Jesus is our Hope, and 
more — our Only Hope. There is an infinity, 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 1 35 

I repeat, between the Creator and creature to the 
effect that man could not, when left to himself, 
by any possibility, lay before God a perfect satis- 
faction. " In order, then," says St. Thomas, " that 
satisfaction may be made to God for the sin of 
man, it is necessary that the one who makes 
amends should be found at the same time both 
God and man : God, because a God has been the 
offended ; and man, because it is man who has 
delivered the offence." We ought to consider 
deeply the incompetency of human power to 
atone for even one sin. St. Thomas says ' that 
sin committed against God entails a certain in- 
finiteness — from the infiniteness of the Divine 
Majesty.' 

An offence is so much the greater according as 
he is greater against whom we sin. For this reason 
it is necessary in working out a full satisfaction for 
sin, that the act of the one who is satisfying should 
claim an infinite efficacy and power, as being the 
act namely of one who is at the same time both 
God and man. We are constantly reminded of 
this by the saints of God, to whom it was a constant 
and inexhaustible source of humility, when they 
came to reflect on the immeasurable and hopeless 
distance that lay between God and their own naked 
selves. 

It was necessary, as we know from Holy 
Scripture, that God should offer to justice satis- 
faction for the sin of Adam. The mere idea 
bewilders; the method selected overwhelms us. 
St. Leo says : "Truly that is a mercy of God, 



136 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

when, to repair the human race, and having other 
means, at hand, God should especially choose that 
way of destroying the work of the devil by which 
He would bring into action not the virtue of His 
power but the way of His justice." St. Francis 
de Sales adds : "The sweetness of mercy was 
embellished by the beauty of justice. God 
resolved to save man by way of a rigorous 
redemption. As this redemption could not be 
wrought out except by His own Son, God set forth 
that He would ransom man, not by one of those 
divine actions of love, which indeed were more than 
sufficient to redeem a million worlds, but rather 
by all the sufferings which He underwent as far as 
the memorable death on the cross." It was not 
in the presence of justice as a friend that Almighty 
God's mercy appeared. Mercy stood before 
God as a victim, and cancelled with blood man's 
full indebtedness to His justice. Mercy took on 
flesh, and this is Christ, the eternal Son of God. 
He paid God in full for the sin of man. 

It was not love precisely that redeemed mankind. 
The creation of the world is a manifestation of 
God's power and God's goodness, but in the 
Redemption we see more. When Adam sat 
brooding in his darkness and gloom, a cursed and 
a doomed man, without any hope of redemption, 
it was then in a rift of the dark cloud there came 
a gleam of light. It was the motherly face of 
mercy, lighting up with hope the sinner's dark 
bosom. Light shineth in the darkness, and 
from that hour this hope has never fled from man's 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 1 37 

bosom, as it is written by the poet : ' Hope springs 
eternal in the human breast,' and dates from that 
day when God, in His mercy, promised the world 
His Redeeming Son : " I will put enmity between 
thee and the woman" — "For by a man came 
death, and by a Man the resurrection of the dead, 
and as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall 
be made live." It is with the utmost earnestness 
that I recommend to your meditation the great 
mercy of God evidenced in this choice of a way 
— via justifies — to redeem us. You have witnessed 
examples of the terror of His justice. Now Jesus 
Christ presents Himself before that same awful 
justice and says: "Visit upon My head the chas- 
tisements of justice : I shall bear the penalty of sin, 
that hope may be brought unto man's melancholy 
life and I shall take the punishments for all the 
sins of mankind from the very beginning of the 
world unto the end." 

Satan set out from hell and has come into this 
world of ours simply to contrive to draw man 
into sin. The devil fancied it would be a shame- 
ful blot on the dignity of God, a slur upon His 
glory, if he could entice man from God's standard 
and destroy him forever. God determined in His 
mercy that wretched man should be forgiven; that 
he should be resurrected from his condition, for 
God said : "I shall put enmities between thee and 
the woman, she shall crush thy head." 

The mercy of the redemption is a mystery : as 
God's other attributes, it exceeds human meas- 
urement. It is larger than the devil's ability to do 



I38 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

evil. St. Paul says to Titus : " When the good- 
ness and kindness of our Saviour God appeared, 
not by the works of justice which we have done, 
but according to His mercy, He saved us." Why 
did He evince this mercy to man? He showed 
no forbearance to angels. It was because He 
could not suffer the accursed Adam propagating, 
as father and root thereof, a family of doomed 
children, a fated race that must perish forever. 
He moreover considered how artifice and strata- 
gem were employed by Satan to seduce our first 
parents. The angels, on the contrary, having 
been independent in their own being, involved no 
descendants in their fall. Their evil had sprung 
from within their own hearts. "Self-depraved, and 
self-tempted " were they. St. Francis de Sales 
formulates the reasons as follows: "God took 
into account how the evil and perverse Satan sur- 
prised the first man ; and considered the great- 
ness of the temptation by which he fell. Now 
He saw that the whole human race would perish 
by the fall of one. It was for these reasons He 
regarded our nature with pity, and resolved to 
succor us." 

Who now will be the instrument to deliver us 
from the tyrant Satan? Who will free us from 
our bonds? Who will be our savior? Love 
demands some one willing, and justice some one 
able to pay the rigid satisfaction. Man must 
die, or God's justice must perish. There is only 
one alternative. God looks out among the heav- 
enly hosts, waiting for the hero to come. Where 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 1 39 

is the one who will offer his life in order that 
man may be saved? Who will redeem man's 
mortal crime? And the voice of the Son of 
God awakens the eternal hills: "Behold, I come," 
and the star falls from heaven o'er Bethlehem and 
the world answers back the adoring welcome : 
"Christ Jesus our Hope ! " (St. Paul, Chap, i.) 
Our Divine Lord offers Himself to the Father in 
atonement for our sins. He mounts the altar steps 
and lies a victim under the gleaming blade of the 
Father's wrath. Man, I repeat, cannot satisfy God 
for his sin. It is necessary that God should offer 
Himself as the 'red cow' of the Old Law — in 
which no blemish was found, — was burned 
for sin, — Whose ashes purified the sinners of 
Israel. 

Our Divine Lord has more than fully satisfied 
the Father, but He has, nevertheless, left some- 
thing for us to do. The redemption would be 
vain, though God died for us ; we will not — can- 
not pluck its fruits, unless we make up in our 
flesh ' what is wanting to the Passion ' of Our 
Divine Lord. If He redeemed us He has made 
a treasury; but the application thereof remains 
with ourselves, and is accomplished by uniting 
our own satisfactions with those of Christ. We 
become like Jesus Christ by the satisfactions we 
offer for sin, and by these satisfactions we have 
the most secure pledge of glory : " If we suffer 
with Him we shall be glorified with Him," the 
Apostle says. All our satisfactions assume their 
power from the life and death of Jesus Christ. 



I4-0 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

We have in the Old Law an image of Christ, the 
Redeemer, and a figure of how our satisfactions, 
accomplished as Christians, must be applied be- 
fore we can be saved. Zachary saw a golden 
candlestick, and it had seven funnels for lights, 
surmounted by a vase of oil, which fed the flames ; 
and the vase was fed simply by two olive-trees. 
That candlestick is the Church ; those lights are 
the seven sacraments ; the oil in the vase is the 
Blood of Jesus Christ, and the olive-trees are the 
satisfactions of Christ, and the satisfactions of 
men in co-operation with Him. Whatever satis- 
faction or sanctification ; whatever virtue or power 
we have, comes from Christ. The Lord has done 
His part, now man must do his. "God created 
us without our co-operation, but He will not 
redeem us without it," says St. Augustine. So, 
in order that we may make satisfaction to the 
justice of God, we must make a personal appli- 
cation of our own satisfactions to the personal 
satisfactions of Jesus Christ. 

A temerarious reliance on His satisfactions such 
as shuns co-operation with God, is an abuse of 
Divine charity, unpardonable ingratitude, and 
withal shocking imposition. It is a temerity and 
equivalent breach of our faith so to reckon our 
satisfactions as to neglect them because of their 
trifling nature. We despise the little things it is 
within our power to do, being misled by the false 
judgment of a portion of the world touching on 
the value of human actions, — a judgment formed 
by ignorance or concocted by indolence. Intrin- 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 141 

sically, our actions may be trifling or even trivial, 
aye, worthless : " What is man that thou art 
mindful of him?" queries David. It is true that 
* without Me you can do nothing,' admits the 
Lord. But as when a drop of water is com- 
mingled with the chalice of wine, and the two 
become amalgamated into one ; so, the smallest 
action we perform in the nature of penance, 
though in itself it be no more than a drop of 
water, becomes, when we apply it to the Passion 
of Our Lord, greater in the sight of God than 
all the deeds of natural heroism performed by 
the human race past, present, and to come, 
taken in a group ; for, we may, when our 
smallest action is joined with the action of Our 
Lord, and is touched by the blood and merits of 
the redemption — resolved into the laws of sym- 
pathy governing the Mystical Body of Christ, 
say: 'I no longer do it; I — the man, but Jesus 
Christ doeth it in me.' — "I no longer live," says 
St. Paul, "but Jesus Christ liveth in me; " or, Of 
myself I can do nothing, ' but I can do all things 
in Him that strengtheneth me.' 

Our Lord prayed for this fruitful union : " Father, 
that they may be one in me, as Thou in me and I 
in Thee." Our Lord insists on this union when 
He tells us we must become 'branches' of the 
'vine' in order to bring forth fruit for heaven. 
If, then, our satisfactions are to be acceptable to 
God, they must be united with those of Jesus 
Christ. We must have distilled into our lives 
the sap, that is the grace of the Lord, and con- 



142 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

sequently the virtues and merits of Jesus Christ. 
But, if we neglect penance, Our Lord's life will 
not save us : "I have chosen you, and appointed 
you, that you should go, and should bring forth 
fruit" (John xv. 16). We fancy that because God 
died for us, He atoned to the justice of God so as 
nothing should remain for us to do. We must, 
however, I repeat, unite our own works with 
God's: "If any one remaineth not in Me, he 
shall be cast forth as a branch and shall wither ; 
and they shall gather him up and cast him into 
the fire; and he burnetii" (John xv. 6). 

To such amongst us as pray and yet fail to 
practice the virtue of penance, because, as they 
allege, Christ paid all for us, therefore, what re- 
mains for us to do? I say, Our Lord prayed 
for us as well, that we might all be saved and 
might not perish ; and, yet, if we do not pray we 
cannot be saved. Though the Lord prayed for 
us, His prayers will not avail without our prayers. 
The Master's prayers and ours must be knitted 
together to become efficacious, that is, to find 
sure grace and favor before the throne of God. 
When united the effect of the union is imperish- 
able strength. Though the Lord has done pen- 
ance, we are not, nor can we be, exempted from 
the s-pirit and virtue of penance. It is, more- 
over, just as illogical not to do penance, basing 
your conduct on the ground that Christ has done 
it, as it would be logical to neglect or omit prayer 
for the reason that Christ has prayed for us. 
Now, no one is seen to fancy that he may, with 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION, 1 43 

any degree of safety to his salvation, neglect 
prayer. And why will a Christian disregard 
penance? 

We have before our eyes the solid fact of the 
redemption, with the hard way, Our Lord selected 
to satisfy the claims of justice. In this connec- 
tion it has been mooted whether Almighty God 
would have become man, even though mankind 
had not fallen. In the thinking of some the 
Incarnation would have still been wrought out. 
We may say, however, with St. Thomas, that 
this is not found in Sacred Scripture. The An- 
gelic Doctor adds: " Though God does not re- 
strict Himself to becoming man in case man had 
sinned, still it remains a fact that God would 
never have come into this world with a passible 
body, were it not for the sin of man, though 
the power of God is not bound down to this." 
Beyond all dispute, the coming of the Lord in 
His mortal and passible human nature was to 
save mankind. This St. Paul tells us: "What 
might we not expect of Almighty God, Who did 
not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up to 
death for us? Behold, how you have been pur- 
chased with a great price." The fact remains 
after all, that Christ came with that Body which 
suffered, and which He submitted to His life's 
ignominies out of the fulness of His mercy and 
the tenderness of the compassion that burned in 
His bosom for sinners : " Therefore I suffer all 
things for the sake of the elect, that they also 
may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus 



144 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

with heavenly glory" (II. Tim. ii. 10). And yet 
it seems, there is little gratitude or response from 
the world to the tender mercies of God. The 
world disowns, as it were, its own guilt and 
takes the redemption as a most natural thing, 
— as though the Lord had been obliged to be 
born and die for us. If so, then God was the 
sinner, the guilty one, and there was no mercy. 

Almighty God was not under obligation, in any 
sense of His justice, to lay down His life for us. 
It was the abundance of His own sweet love, that 
moved Our Lord to sacrifice His precious life to 
obtain amnesty for us rebels. Again, people take 
redemption as a matter of course, I say, and 
pay no compliments to Almighty God ; but this 
time the matter of course springs from the 
world's pride. They do not so much as say : 
< I thank Thee, O God ! ' 

None of us can fathom the mercy of God in 
the Incarnation. Only God Himself can sound 
the depths of this mystery. David sought the 
reason of the redemption. He failed — " What 
is man that Thou art mindful of him?" The 
prophet, contemplating his own nothingness, is 
forced to exclaim : " All my substance is as 
nothing before Thee ! " The mercy of God over- 
reaches human measurement. ''Sooner couldst 
thou recall the days that are gone, sooner 
couldst thou make green all withered flowers and 
gather up every drop of rain, than possess the 
power to measure the love which I bear to thee 
and all mankind," says Eternal Wisdom by the 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 1 45 

lips of Blessed Suso. But those who essay to be 
moderately grateful, will not fail to offer to the 
Redeemer, from time to time, little acts of be- 
coming gratitude. Our habitual prayer will be : 
"That our fastings and all our daily satisfactions 
may be made efficacious by the grace of 
God." Let us thank Almighty God for all He 
has done. 

Oh, if we could understand what grace is ! — 
that one grace of God, coming to us through the 
redemption, for the remission of sin, is greater 
than the creation of the world. St. Augustine, 
in reply to the question, whether the prodigy of 
Divine Omnipotence forgiving but one sin, is less 
than creating the vast world out of nothing, says : 
1 that it is greater than the creation of heaven 
and earth.' And St. Thomas supplies us with 
an analysis of St. Augustine's conclusion, when 
he says : " Creation is within the bounds of 
nature ; but, the pardon of the sinner demands 
justification, and justification calls for grace ; 
grace is above nature, and one grace of God 
infinitely surpasses the creation of worlds." 

Every time we kneel before the altar to witness 
the Unbloody Sacrifice of God's eternal Son to 
the Father, let memory recall the words — the 
vow of Love : " In the head of the Book it is 
written of Me : Behold, I come to do Thy will " — 
I come to offer Myself for the sinners of the 
world : wreak on Me Thy sternest vengeance : 
the weight of man's iniquities put upon Me ; I 
shall be bruised for them. 



146 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Have you conceived the resolve to do penance? 
Behold, you have your Divine Model Jesus, and 
the footprints of the Divine Penitent clearly de- 
fined. God points to Calvary as He pointed to 
the Tabernacle — Look ! — see the Divine Pattern 
— ' Exemplar? and do likewise ; copy him ! "Be 
ye imitators of me," says St. Paul, " as I am of 
Christ." Christ is called by the prophets, the 
Stone — the ' Chief Stone,' because, as a gem, to 
be set, must be cut, so the Lord of Hosts has 
said: " And I shall grave the graving;" and 
Our Divine Lord was cut with the lance, the 
nails, the crowning with thorns, and so put 
through the rest of the cutting process of His 
Bloody Passion. He is called the ' Chief Stone,' 
and the ' Red Stone,' because He is rose-colored 
with the blood He has poured out for us. But 
He must be surrounded with brilliants. There 
must be concordant gems about Him — jewels 
worthy of Him. For Our Lord is the ' Chief 
Stone,' therefore not the only stone. Hence there 
are other, though lesser stones : " If any man 
will come after Me, let him take up his cross and 
follow Me." Who are these other, if less lustrous, 
jewels? These are the men who do penance, 
and copy the Divine ' graving ' of Jesus Christ. 
We, who by our daily penances, our sufferings and 
crucifixions, will be cut and polished to surround 
Him, as so many jewels, and finally be set with 
Him forever in the Bosom of the Eternal Father. 

There is nothing I can find, by way of example, 
to illustrate the Divine mercy of Christ and man's 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 1 47 

ingratitude, after all that Christ had done for the 
world, more stirring than the famous little 
historical episode that occurred in the days of 
Edward III. A siege had been laid against the 
city of Calais. The people were stout-hearted, 
and, with the characteristic sensitiveness of 
the Latin peoples, would not surrender, though 
the king kept them inwalled for a long period. 
They were on the verge of famine, and all the 
besieged doomed to perish. But foolishness is not 
bravery, so finally, the people of the city, when 
the horrid face of starvation glared at them, sent 
a courier to the king with honorable overtures 
of compromise. The king sent back word that 
he would exact six victims to be sent to him to be 
put to death before he would consent to lift the 
siege of the unfortunate city. Such were the con- 
ditions that gave birth to the heroism of Eustache 
de St. Pierre, one of the first burghers of Calais* 
Edward's harsh terms of peace caused general 
lamentation ; and resentment was written on the 
starved faces of Calais. The people were un- 
willing to give one victim, much less six, for the 
ransom. Eustache came forward and made 
known his determination to go and offer his life 
to the king in order that his fellow-countrymen 
might be spared. He said: "I know I can 
count upon the mercy of my Saviour in offering 
my life to save the city and so many people." 
Three of his kinsmen also offered themselves as 
victims ; their example roused up two more 
volunteers, and away went the six brave patriots 



148 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

to pay the terrible ransom. They went prepared 
for their fate. Edward ordered the headsman 
to be sent in, and the six were on the point of 
being decapitated, when the wife of the king 
sought his presence, and implored her liege and 
lord to show mercy. She pointed to the valor of 
these men, and witnessed how noble they were to 
offer their own lives that he might spare the 
large number of their fellow-citizens. The king 
relented and spared the six noble lives. Now, 
let us suppose Eustache as having gone back to 
Calais, that his countrymen would not recognize 
him ; — dealt with him as an utter stranger, and 
afterward put him to death, for no other reason 
than that he loved and suffered for them. 
Would you not have here an example of the 
world's dealings with Jesus Christ, Who offered 
Himself to the Eternal Father to save us from 
eternal death? 

The picture of Eustache seems overcolored, the 
character of his ill-treatment overdrawn, but Holy 
Scripture records the brutal treatment of Our Lord, 
and the foundation of the brutality must be sought 
down deeper than the human mind — in fiendish 
hate. How little, I repeat, men thank the Lord for 
the mercy and heroism of His life. Let me 
implore you to be grateful, and to thank Him 
every day of your life for all He has done. 

The Master must have been very much pained 
by the base ingratitude that was shown on that 
occasion, when He cured the ten lepers. Yet all 
men were filled with leprosy : yes, we were all 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. 1 49 

lepers shut out from the blessed vision of God, 
precluded from the glories of Paradise, as loath- 
some creatures, driven beyond the walls. Our 
Lord cured ten lepers, and only one of these 
returned to thank Him. The Saviour asked, with 
pathos, if there were not ten cured? Where are 
the nine others? Have they forgotten My kind- 
ness? Now, beloved brethren, how many amongst 
us send up to the Blessed Redeemer gratitude at 
all consistent with the pains, sufferings, ignomin- 
ious life and violent death He underwent to save us, 
gratitude truly such and not merely puerile senti- 
ment, solid works of love, sympathy and atone- 
ment. How many people look upon God as their 
liberator? How many realize, that were it not for 
the death of the Son, no man would ever witness 
the vision of the Father? And yet, this is the 
corner-stone of all our salvation. 

You do not perhaps understand how the saints 
could humble themselves to the dust, and think 
they were unworthy of the things God had done 
for them, yet their piety is not overdone. The 
foundation lies in their realizing the fact, that God 
is God and man is man. We do not. Our piety is 
underdone. No matter how great the saint — even 
the Holy Mother of God could not have rescued 
us, immaculate as she is, the glory of mankind. 
No, brethren, not even the holy and unspotted 
Mother of God could offer consistent satisfaction 
for our sins without the death of her Son. Let us, 
I say, be grateful. It is hard to grant favors to 
one who is ungrateful, as our own experience 



I$0 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

persuades us ; but when we express our gratitude 
it must move God to bestow more readily and 
plentifully new favors upon us. If the leper who 
returned thanks, were to ask another favor, would 
not Our Lord give it more quickly to him than to 
those ungrateful wretches who went their way and 
cast to the winds the memory of His former kind- 
ness? We could not go in cold blood to ask God 
for fresh favors, when we did not so much as thank 
Him for His past ones. I thank Thee, Almighty 
God, for what Thou hast done for me. This is 
the corner-stone of our piety, and the solid hope 
of our future prayers. Again, if you will only 
realize that your sufferings without God's are use- 
less; that you, my brethren of to-day, cannot, of 
yourselves, satisfy for sin any more than Adam, in 
his day ; that you are, like him, finite, and that all 
mankind without exception are so ; that He is the 
Infinite, thrice-holy God, and that we before Him 
are but grains of dust ! The work of man's 
redemption is a divine and pure mercy. If it 
were not for that mercy, I repeat, man could not 
be saved. The greatest efforts of human endeavor 
were too weak and helpless to lift the weight of 
the sinner and appease the justice of God. When 
we view the sign of the cross gleaming on the 
steeples of our churches and gables of our schools, 
our convents and academies, does it — shall it 
remind us of the Hero Who laid down His life 
to save the City of God ? Is the Crucifix hanging 
upon the panel of our chamber-walls in all our 
homes? Does the marble or pictured Face look 



THE TRAGEDY OF REDEMPTION. I 5 I 

down upon us, and greet us awaking? Ah, how 
many come to the Master's grave in daily medita- 
tion? How many spread flowers in memory 
sweet over His tomb — flowers of saintly thought 
and noble resolve? How many remember what 
the Master endured for the world? How many 
witness in deeds that Jesus Christ was and is the 
Saviour of the world ? How many, I ask — the few 
that are chosen ! Am I of the Chosen ? Let us 
then be found in the ranks of the Chosen, quietly 
resting in the scars of the wounded Master, as 
the robin in the branches of the tree. In the 
storms of life they are near and we shall go into 
them — the nests which we shall have builded — the 
wounds of Christ. Here we shall find safe shelter 
and daily food and drink for the soul always. 
The bird flits from tree to tree. It never quits 
its shadow. We, too, shall go from duty to duty; 
from the Lord to the Lord, but all our extra life 
shall find its source, its progress and expansion, 
its accomplishment within the shadow of the 
passion and death of Our Lord. Let us regret 
the past and be resolved for the future, as David : 
" I shall sing forever the mercies of the Lord." 



152 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LAST FARTHING. 

All things must end. All things must pass 
away ; and this law of creation touches the beautiful 
life of our blessed and adorable Master. " Con- 
summatum est" — it is finished: it is achieved: 
all is accomplished. Now Our Lord, upon His 
Throne of the Cross, majestic in His grief, sur- 
veying His life — He did not have to look far, for 
with God there is no past nor future, but all is 
present — soliloquizes : Have I left any debt un- 
paid ? Is there anything wanting to the redemp- 
tion of man that I have not discharged? He 
looks : all is accomplished ! I have paid to the 
justice of the Father the full indebtedness for 
the sins of the human family. He had run the 
gamut of earthly affliction, from the first note 
struck in weak accents of childish prattle in the 
damp grotto, to the highest on top of the moun- 
tain, faintly whispered by the dying God in the 
awful cadenza of His life, that died away in the 
hush of death. From Bethlehem to Golgotha ! 
From the cavern to the cross ! The last thing, 
and the hardest, is to die. His frame quivers 
ere He reaches it, for, herein lies the severest 
retribution upon sin ; herein lies in its full weight 
the sense, though vicarious, of guilt, — " The 
wages of sin is death." But Our Divine Saviour 



THE LAST FARTHING. 1 53 

must die. He has finished all His trials and com- 
pleted the allotted measure of His sufferings as 
far as this, the last one of all — death. 

Progress has been His motto throughout His 
whole life. To advance higher and yet higher: 
"And the child grew and waxed strong, full of 
wisdom" (Luke ii. 40;) from penance to greater 
penance ; and the last act of His life was to be 
the greatest of all His sufferings : " The path of 
a just man is like a shining light that goeth for- 
ward and increaseth unto the perfect day." Do 
you assent to the principle of St. Bernard that 
in the spiritual life not to advance is to go back- 
ward? Few begin badly. Many have begun 
with something grand, heroic ; but how have 
they ended? Yet, the end crowns the work, and 
only he shall be crowned who has indeed touched 
the goal. Look at the tide, — how it advances 
and recedes : It does not long stand still. It has 
a message for us. The souls that in the way of 
virtue show themselves indifferent to perfection 
and affect to stand still, cannot in reality do so 
very long. Either they must go onward, or the 
tide of grace will go out from them ; and what 
is human nature when the tide of grace has re- 
ceded from the soul? A stagnant pool, with 
acres of pestilential mud, that emit befouling 
vapors and the germs of death ! We may fancy 
we are not going backward ; but, prithee, know 
that the collapse in the spiritual life does not 
come about quickly ; it comes steaiingly upon 
us ; the devil does not want us to know it, — he 



154 AM l 0F THE CHOSEN. 

is the prince of darkness : " Vigilate! watch out," 
said Christ — feed and trim your lamps. If for 
a long time we have led a good life, we do not 
fall suddenly, but, little by little, in the same way 
as we ordinarily acquire virtue. The soul stands 
in need of constant mending. Then, in our 
penances, let < Excelsior ' be our motto. Ex- 
pand daily : — "Be ye holy as your Heavenly 
Father is holy." Let us be resolved to advance 
daily, and we shall not recede. 

Our Divine Lord reaches at last the summit, 
the great climax of His life, in His magnificent 
and heroic death. In that brilliant climax that 
caps the tragedy of the redemption, He touches 
the highest pitch that God can reach in unveiling 
heaven's love to earth, in displaying to the crea- 
ture the justice and mercy of God. 

A God to die ! How terrible must be His 
justice ; how infinite His love ! Justice did not 
spare Him — 'Who did not spare His Son.' We 
fancy there ought to be fewer nails to penetrate 
and tear the adorable flesh. We think one drop of 
blood ought to suffice. But, each wound of lance, 
and ragged burrough of nail is like a rent in the 
heavens, through which the mercy and justice of 
God appear and shine resplendent. The deeper 
the iron penetrates, the deeper we go into God's 
justice : the wider the gaping wound, the wider 
broaden the rifts in the clouds by which God's 
attributes are the more abundantly shown to man. 

Our Lord had begun in sorrow : He now ends 
in sorrow. His life has been one unending sor- 



THE LAST FARTHING. 1 55 

row. Like as in the great ocean where every 
drop has something of the salt, so, nothing in 
Our Lord's life was without its meed of bitter- 
ness. Bethlehem had its hardships, Nazareth its 
fatiguing manual labors, where Jesus toiled with 
the toiler ; Jerusalem was the theatre of His 
laborious public ministry, with its exhausting 
eloquence and tiresome journeys afoot. He slept 
with the homeless on the hillside, for 'the Son of 
Man had not whereon to lay His head.' He 
shared the confusion of the bridal pair, when the 
wine failed at Cana. He wept for His friend at 
the tomb of Lazarus. He sorrowed with the 
sorrowful, and shared the grief of His mourning 
friends, — with Mary and Martha at the grave of 
their brother, and with the widow of Nairn by 
the side of her son's coffin. All these were in- 
stalments on the ' great price ' justice demanded 
for our ransom. From the bottom of the scale 
to the top, every note of suffering was round, 
full and clear. There was no shirking, no hold- 
ing back, no sparing Himself — only the abandon 
of uncontrollable love and mercy for mankind. 
He might have redeemed us by one tear, one 
groan, one prayer; by His circumcision, when 
His blood trickled down His tender limbs ; by the 
slightest humiliation. But no: He will satisfy 
justice to the full extent. In the redemption, 
Christ rose to the highest pitch of divinest love. 
Oh, yes, God so loved the world ! The Master 
could not show greater love. He tells us so : 
" No man can show greater love than to lay 



156 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

down his life for his friend." True, He could 
have shown greater power than He has, but not 
greater love. The blood of holocausts did not 
please the Father; then He said: " Behold, I 
come to do Thy will." Our Divine Lord, in ac- 
cepting this bloody death, not being willing in 
the enthusiasm of His love to rescue us by a 
sigh, shows us the incomprehensibility of justice 
and the length and breadth and depth and height 
of His benignity and mercy. 

The death of the Master was not, in itself, a 
single action. It was only a part of that act 
which we call the 'life of Jesus.' It was the last 
syllable in the word — Redemption. There was 
the same characteristic in life and in death : both 
bear the impress of suffering and penance offered 
for sin. There was no difference between the 
life and the death of Our Divine Saviour. Can 
the same be said of us? Is our death of penance 
only a continuation or culmination of our life of 
penance ; or, is it not true, that we live impeni- 
tent and expect to die penitent? We shall die 
just as we shall have lived. If people live on 
and care nothing for the salvation of their souls, 
if they do not heed the 'one thing necessary,' 
they cannot expect to die otherwise than in their 
sins. Every word, every thought, every breath 
of Christ, was but a part of that one grand action 
— His life; a splinter of the 'tree of life,' the 
cross. To die is an act of the living. So it is 
with us. We begin to die as soon as we are 
born. What we call living is dying : life is a 



THE LAST FARTHING. I 57 

death-struggle. They should be of the same 
character. We can reasonably expect to die 
only as we shall have lived — ' hope fixed to an 
uncertain hour is vain, and we know not the 
hour.' 

How grand is the death of Our Divine Lord! 
He is not obliged to die — it is a free act of pure 
mercy and love. Christ could not show greater 
love. He was offered up because it was His 
will, — "Behold, I come to do Thy will," and His 
Father said : "For the iniquities of My people 
have I struck Him." Our Lord, looking back, 
gasps: "It is finished." I have paid everything 
due, up to the end. He had been mocked, 
scourged, dubbed a fool, but He had not paid: 
all yet. The wages of sin is — death ! One 
more farthing for the sins of the world — the 
end. And what is it, Father? Death ! It is all 
over now. The Beloved Master has paid the 
Eternal Creditor the last farthing of the ' great 
price.' The last wrinkle of wrath on the brow 
of His Father is smoothed. 

The Master's death was most peaceful, with 
the peace of duty well done ; with the peace of 
holiness, the imperishable peace of virtue. He 
had accomplished all ; there is nothing further to 
be done ! " Father, into Thy hands I commend 
My spirit." "As the path of a just man," I 
repeat, " is like a shining light going forward to 
perfect day," so was Our Lord's life. It went on 
from Bethlehem to Calvary. It grew like the 
light to the midday splendor ; and the crimson 



158 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

glories of the dying day are like the scarlet 
beauties of the Bloody Passion, spread over the 
glorious evening of Our Lord's precious life. Our 
Lord was never so beautiful as when He was 
dying ; for, from that pale Face there shone that 
great love, the most abundant testimony of which 
He was now giving, for ' greater love than this 
no man hath, to lay down his life for his friends.' 
The dying for us tells how the Master loved the 
world. He dies with the tranquillity that follows 
battle — not with the false peace of surrender. 
The latter is not true peace. Peace is where 
there is domination ; the peace that follows the 
struggles of war, and the joy of the soldier re- 
turning — a conqueror. 

" I go to the Father." Ah, yes, this is the 
penitent's death, whose life has been one of pen- 
ance, whose debts are all paid to God. This 
was the peace of Our Lord's blessed Soul : 
"Father, I have conquered the world." Think 
of the humiliation of Christ's death. Had it been 
simply in His Mother's house, where she might 
have knelt beside His bed, kissed His throbbing 
temples, looked into His eyes, and comforted His 
dying moments by telling Him of her immaculate 
love, and how she adored Him ; if He were 
surrounded even by His disciples, who could 
swear to Him their devotion, their love and their 
promise to carry His name to the Nations ; the 
humiliation that God's Son had died would have 
been enough. But, He must die between two 
thieves, and die with the brand of a criminal, 



THE LAST FARTHING. I 59 

that we may be free. Did the world know that 
this was the Son of God? Human depravity and 
iniquity reaches its highest pitch in the death of 
Jesus Christ. The world, the synagogue, and 
the throne : the cowardly State, deluded church- 
men, — sectaries, not followers of Christ, — and the 
fallen priest : Pilate, Caiaphas and Judas, are im- 
mediately responsible for the murder of the Lord. 
His enemies then, are His enemies now. God 
used this, the maximum of man's guilt, as an in- 
strument to exhibit the full glories of His mercy : 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do." 

There was darkness from the sixth to the 
ninth hour. The Sun was ashamed and hid his 
face from such a cruel scene. The very elements 
felt the shock of that death. Denis, the Aeropa- 
gite, felt the event in distant Athens. There 
were earthquakes ; the dead rose up, and we may 
still further believe, with the pious Emmerich, 
that Zachary, Simon the Just, and Jeremiah, 
came forth from the gates of the sanctuary, as 
the veil of the temple was rent in twain. " Let 
us go out from this place," cried a voice from 
heaven, as the awakened prophets walked forth. 
This was the grand climax, the most beautiful 
and impressive scene ever presented to mortal 
eye. 

Our Lord died, not for one person, but for the 
world; He died for all: "Preach the gospel 
to every creature." He was born outside of any 
home, so that no family could claim Him — the 



160 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

world was His home. He died under His 
Father's roof, the sky : " Giving Himself in re- 
demption for all." " He offered Himself up as 
a propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins, 
but the sins of the whole world." He excluded 
no one, Judas Iscariot, Pilate, or Caiaphas, but 
said for all: " Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do." 

How shall we die? What will be our feelings 
when we stand before those gates of death about 
to swing open, that we may pass on to eternal 
life ? Hear the commingled soliloquy and pathetic 
apostrophe of the great Bossuet before the face of 
death. How full of sweet peace and the strong 
hope of Christ's death ; the peace of victory, and 
the hope of reward. Can you make these words 
your own, with the same serenity of hope 
and peace as he? How grand and pathetic! 
Methinks, as I hear His soul's communings, that 
I am within the tent of some valiant and sturdy 
old soldier, who says his farewell to the world, 
and tells of the noble and virtuous expectation 
that thrills his dying warrior-bosom : 

" My senses grow dim," says he, "my life is 
vanishing. Soon others shall come and take my 
place. ' Yonder is his chamber,' they will say : 
' there is his bed,' and they shall find me there 
no more. How sad ! aye, had I indeed no hopes ; 
yet, if all about me perish, I am going thither 
where dwelleth my All. Thou, God Omnipotent,, 
Eternal One, God of happiness, I rejoice in Thy 
power, in Thy eternalness, and in Thy happiness. 



THE LAST FARTHING. l6l 

When shall I behold Thee, Light, O Good 
Supreme, O Source of Goodness? Thou, the 
only Good One, Who art the only One, Who art 
All, in Whom I shall be, Who shalt dwell in me, 
Who shalt be everything unto everyone, with Whom 
I shall blend in one spirit. When shall I behold 
Thee, O Thou Beginning, Who never hadst be- 
ginning? When shall I enjoy the vision of Thy 
Son, emerging from Thy bosom, Who is Thine 
equal ? When shall I enjoy the rapture of behold- 
ing Thy Holy Spirit proceeding from Your union 
and touching the limit of Your fecundity? 
Silence ! thou, my soul ; not another word ! 
Wherefore wilt thou go on in thy broken accents 
and staggering voice, now that the Truth is about 
to address thee ? " 

How did he expect Truth would address him? 
In these words : " Come, thou beloved of my 
Father." Foreknowing the sanctity of God and 
our record, are we ready to take our place among 
the blessed spirits, with a full consciousness of all 
that God asks of us? — the same spotlessness, the 
same unblemished soul that we find in the deli- 
cate babe, just dripping from the baptismal font 
— a human angel with folded wings. Has pen- 
ance purified you by a second baptism? — "Receive 
this white garment that thou mayest carry it 
without stain before the judgment seat of God." 
Is your soul to-day as pure as it was then? 
When you stand before Death will your feelings 
be akin to those of your Divine Saviour? If you 
have lived like Him, the life of a penitent, and 



1 62 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

died like Him on the Cross, then you may expect 
to enter with Him into glory. 

By the death of Our Divine Lord we are re- 
leased from the yoke of the devil. We sometimes 
fancy it is our own flesh and blood that torments 
us, when in truth it is the devil, under our window. 
He carries the keys of hell, as St. Peter does 
those of heaven. All mortal conditions favor 
the evil spirit — the flesh and the world. Our 
Divine Lord, by His death, overcame the princi- 
palities and powers of hell, — "And divesting 
principalities and powers, He made a show of 
them confidently, triumphing over them in Him- 
self. (Gall, ii, 15.) The devil still has a certain 
power over man, by tempting him and assailing 
him with annoyances. There is still idolatry in 
the world ; therefore, it would seem as though 
Christ had not really overcome the powers of 
hell ; but, St. Thomas meets this objection as 
follows : " It is impossible to deny that even in 
our day, by the permission of God, the devil can 
attack the souls of men by temptations and by 
tormenting their bodies ; that he can, moreover, 
give them trouble by lying signs, deceptive 
machinations, and wonders ; but the Passion of 
Christ furnishes man with the remedy by which 
he can defend himself and escape eternal death. 
This remedy existed, not only after, but before 
the Passion of Christ, and all those who before 
the Passion resisted the devil, drew from the 
Passion of Jesus Christ, the force and the power 
to do so successfully." We have still upon earth 



THE LAST FARTHING. 1 63 

the idols of our passions, yet we have a power 
against them in the Cross. In the Cross of 
Christ is the very poison of sin, death. We are 
inoculated by it, and by its virus we are saved 
from the poison of the serpent's bite. 

We have been reconciled to the Father by the 
death of His Son. The document consigning 
man to everlasting death was washed out by the 
current of the Saviour's Blood flowing from the 
Cross, as St. Paul says — "Blotting out the hand- 
writing of the decree that was against us ; the 
same He took away, fastening it to the Cross." 

It is not enough to stop sinning, for, newness 
of life is part of penance. We first weigh anchor 
and then set sail. Christ told the sinful woman 
to go and sin no more, but He supposed she 
would do penance. The temporal punishment 
remains after forgiveness. 

We must model our lives upon Our Lord's own 
life. Let our life and death be but one act. 

Let us read everything in this world by the 
lamp that hangs from the skies, the Body of Jesus 
Christ on the Cross : " Death is all philosophy." 
The ancients epitomized all philosophy in death, 
or a meditation on death. But the death of 
Jesus Christ is all Christian philosophy. Says 
the prophet: " My loins are filled with illusions." 
There will be no illusions in death, for death is 
a shedding of illusions. "Vanity of vanities, 
and all is vanity," exclaimed Solomon. We 
recall the illusions of childhood as they are dis- 
pelled by the growing years, when the playthings 



164 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

of infancy, as dolls, seemed living things — the 
toys, the vapid ambitions, and hollow judgments 
on the real in truth and greatness, now disillu- 
sioned. When we were youths, the outward 
semblances we fancied to be symptoms : the long 
or prolific locks seemed learning and art, and 
the faultless Grecian lines and clear face were to 
us signs of spirituality and virtue. Then in 
youth, the thoughtless period of our life, we 
loved fiction above philosophy or history. Where 
now there is light, things are perceived as they 
are. In darkness we cannot see, and are de- 
ceived : "I am the Light: He that folio weth 
after Me walketh not in darkness." In the light 
of death the creations of our fancy will fade away 
and the reality alone shall live. St. Paul says : 
<( We shall see Him as He is," so shall we see 
things for the first time as they are. Our Lord 
says, "I am the Way." And what way? The 
Way of the Cross: "I am the Way, the Truth 
and the Life. He that followeth Me walketh 
not in darkness." Follow Me in the way of the 
cross and you shall have life. We ought to make 
the life of Jesus our study and meditation. Walk 
in the Light ! 

"I am the Way." Yes, and if we meditate 
the Way of the Cross, Christ's kingdom shall 
flourish in us. A kingdom implies obedience. 
We must follow the commands of our suffering 
King, spoken aloud in death. If we do so, Isaias 
will enumerate the blessings that must follow : 
<l The land that was desolate and impassable shall 



THE LAST FARTHING. 1 65 

be glad : and the wilderness shall rejoice with 
joy and praise : the glory of Libanus is given to 
it : the beauty of Carmel and Saron." There will 
be no darkness, brethren, in our souls, if we med- 
itate and imitate Our Crucified Lord, for He is 
1 The Light.' St. Paul's teaching is all summed 
up in 'Jesus Christ Crucified.' No darkness, I 
say, with Isaias, will take the truth from us : 
" They shall see the glory of the Lord and the 
beauty of Our God." No, the daily meditation 
on the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ will 
expose to us the false beauties of this world and 
reveal the true beauties of God and virtue. Sal- 
vation is difficult of accomplishment. At times 
we shudder at its cost, and fear we shall not be 
able to meet all our obligations to God and our 
soul ; but we have ' a way out of our straits,' 
— the contemplation of Our Lord on the Cross : 
" Strengthen ye the feeble hands and confirm 
the weak knees : say to the faint-hearted, take 
courage and fear not : behold, your God will 
bring the revenge of recompense : God Himself 
will come and will save you." Ah, no ; there 
will be no deception of us by the hypocrisy of 
creatures, once we have begun to dwell in Jesus 
Christ at Calvary: "Then shall the eyes of the 
blind be opened : and the ears of the deaf shall 
be unstopped." Yes, we shall find in His Heart 
the grace of the light and the grace of the 
strength to follow it ; the grace to know and the 
grace to do God's will: "Then shall the lame 
leap as a hart : and the tongue of the dumb shall 



1 66 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

be free : for waters are broken out in the desert, 
and streams in the wilderness. And that which 
was dryland shall become a pool, and the thirsty 
land springs of water." We shall indeed get rid 
of our coldness to God and our indifference to 
salvation. We shall no longer go to confession 
and communion like the snail, dragging our legs 
after us, but we shall bound like the hart and 
the panther after the cool stream. We shall cast 
off the yoke of the tyranny of Satan. Our souls 
will no longer be haunts of vice and rendezvous 
of the evil spirits, of Lust, of Avarice, of Pride, 
and the rest of the devil's cubs: " In the dens 
where dragons dwelt before, shall rise up the 
verdure of the weed and the bulrush." God 
promised us, brethren, a sure way to heaven: 
"And a path and a way shall be there, and it 
shall be called the holy way : the unclean shall 
not pass over it, and this shall be unto you a 
straight way, so that fools shall not err therein." 
" I am the Way," says Jesus Christ Crucified : 
" No lion shall be there ; nor shall any mischiev- 
ous beast go up by it nor be found there ; but 
they shall walk there that shall be delivered." 
The chosen of God, the predestinated must fol- 
low in the footprints of Our Lord Crucified : 
"And the redeemed of the Lord" — those who 
study, meditate and imitate the Redeemer — "shall 
return and shall come to Sion with praise ; and 
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads : they 
shall obtain joy and gladness ; and sorrow and 
mourning shall flee away." (Isaias, Ch. xxxv.) 



THE LAST FARTHING. 1 67 

St. Paul reminds us, Our Lord's death will be 
a witness against us: " You will not have chas- 
tisements. Ye are bastards and not sons of 
God." The man who will not do penance is a 
semblance of God's son : he bears the name, he 
is so in outward appearance, but he is not so in 
reality. "Look at Christ, the Son of God, Who 
did penance. Think diligently on Him Who en- 
dureth such opposition from sinners against Him- 
self, that you be not wearied, fainting in your 
minds. We are chastised for our profit : God 
loves those whom He chastiseth." St. Paul 
further tells us, if it were necessary on our part 
we should resist, so to speak, even unto blood. 
Have we done so? Beloved brethren, Christian- 
ity is, as far as practice, in a state of decay : 
The days of Paul are gone, and night is on. 
Methinks, the Judgment Day is nigh ! Oh, for 
the true faith of Paul, that rather than commit 
a sin would, as it were, sweat drops of blood like 
Jesus Christ. Our Lord will come one day with 
a cloud of witnesses — the Judgment Day: "The 
Lord will come in the clouds ; " that is to say, 
in the midst of those valiant souls who did pen- 
ance ; and the Lord Himself will be our judge 
and chief witness. His scars and bruises will 
rebuke our softness and effeminacy. He has 
gone before us, and He invites us to follow on : 
"If any man will come after Me, let him take up 
his cross and follow Me." 

On the way to the Catacombs, there is an in- 
scription marking the spot where St. Peter met 



1 68 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Our Lord. There was persecution in Rome, and 
St. Peter, not having the courage to give up his 
life, was in the act of leaving the city. Our Lord, 
with shouldered cross, met him on the road, and 
St. Peter recognizing Him, said with trembling 
voice: " Whither goest Thou, Master, thus bear- 
ing Thy cross?" And the pathetic reply came 
back to him : " I am going back to Rome to be 
crucified again." Let not this be our rebuke. 
Let our crucifix be our inspiration. 

St. Bonaventure went one day to St. Thomas 
and asked the great Doctor to have a look at his 
books. St. Thomas led him over to his crucifix, 
which bore the marks of tears, the feet of which 
were almost kissed away. So, St. Bennet said 
when dying : " Give me my book. Give me my 
book ! " His crucifix had been his one book, 
his faithful companion during life, and he wanted 
it in death. We cannot all be like St. Francis 
of the Cross, who walked with a cross upon his 
shoulders to the Holy Land and back ; but we 
can do a little penance. 

Now the curtain is to fall upon the life of Our 
Divine Lord. As the dead form of the Master 
hangs upon the horizon, we behold the grandest 
scene ever presented to mortal or divine eyes. 
Sculptors may deal with chisel, and painters with 
brush, to portray the idea of justice and mercy. 
In vain do they picture hell with its red flames, to 
convince the world how terrible God's justice is. 
In vain will they do anything more than copy the 
dead form of Jesus Christ, that tells the world you 



THE LAST FARTHING. 1 69 

'have been purchased at a great price.' Jesus hangs 
for us. The sordid interests of Judas, his hideous 
treason, the hell-born envy of the Jews, and the 
base human respect or political ambition of Pilate, 
were but the weapons Love chose to show us how 
muchjGod hated our sins and loved us sinners. 

Nineteen hundred years ago this happened, but 
Our Lord's death is none the less for us. St. 
Paul tells us this : though Almighty God dies 
for all men, He dies as much for each one of us, 
as He died for all. God loved me and delivered 
Himself up for me. Do you not know that in 
Holy Communion He is whole and entire under 
each particle ; so, the death of Our Divine Saviour, 
though for all is for each one of us. We should 
know that this is the principle with which we 
should look upon Christ's death, to pluck its 
choicest fruits from the tree of the cross. We 
should make it -personal; for, St. Paul says : "He 
loved me and gave Himself up for me." (Gall. 
11, 20.) 

The world does not receive Him as the Son of 
God. The world is scandalized in His death. 
They say that if He were indeed, the Son of God, 
He would have saved Himself. This is what the 
mob said nineteen hundred years ago : "If He 
be the Son of God, let Him come down from the 
cross." Our Lord refutes the error by the 
prophet: "I am, I am the Lord: and there is no 
other Saviour." (Isaias xliii, 11.) 

The hour of deliverance approaches. Banished 
from God, shut out from Heaven ! — so must the 



170 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

world remain in exile until that hour when Jesus 
Christ shall have died. ' 'Until the death of the 
High Priest who shall be at that time. Then shall 
the deer-slayer return and go into his own city 
and house from whence he went." (Joshua xx, 6.) 
"Who is this High Priest," asks St. Ambrose, 
"unless the Son of God, the Word of God, Whose 
advocacy we have before the Father." "Why at 
the death of the pontiff?" asks Theodoret. "Be- 
cause the death of the pontiff, according to the 
order of Melchisedech, was the absolution of the 
sins of men," is his reply. 

There is nothing that will be a stronger witness, 
nothing that should give us greater fear, or greater 
hope, than Christ on the cross : Fear, I say, for, 
can we avow with the ancients, gazing on the 
corpse of the slain; "our hands did not shed this 
blood." (Joshua xx;) Hope, also I say: "Be 
merciful to Thy people, Israel, whom Thou hast 
redeemed, O Lord, and lay not innocent blood to 
their charge, in the midst of Thy people, Israel, 
and the guilt of blood shall be taken from them, 
and Thou shalt be free from the innocent's blood 
that was shed, when Thou shalt have done what 
the Lord hath commanded Thee." (Deut. xxi.) 

The denouement of the tragedy is incompre- 
hensible. Unitarians do not accept the death of a 
God-man, yet how singularly Christ is before all 
eyes. Again if Our Lord were no more than 
a man there would be no redemption. John the 
Baptist laid down his pure life ; martyrs of 
untainted baptismal innocence of life, have died 



THE LAST FARTHING. 171 

victims of faith and love for God and their fellow- 
men ; yet, the world does not dream of any other 
redeemer than Christ: aye, because His death 
was the death of a God. Let us ask of Almighty 
God the true spirit, that He may be our Divine 
Model, that we may follow Him through field 
and mire, faithful to Him. If we follow in the 
Way of the Cross we will rise with Him. Let us, 
then, not stop until we shall lay down our cross 
where Christ laid His down, — on Golgotha, and 
where we will surrender our souls unto Our 
Heavenly Father, in the sweet calm peace of a 
summer evening. 



172 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 



CHAPTER VII. 

man's responsibility for his sins. 

The choice of an evil path lies with ourselves. 
To assign the authorship of our bad deeds to Our 
Maker, beyond the point of bare permissiveness : 
To affect boldly to render God accountable alike 
for the treachery of Judas and the vocation of 
Paul would mean the abrogation of all religious- 
ness in ourselves, whilst it would stun, with its 
blasphemous boldness, the normal sensibilities of 
just men, independent of the fact that such a 
vicious doctrine had been passed upon by the 
anathema of the Church at Trent. 

Adorable in His holiness God is, and must be. 
Whilst the moral evils of the world lie under His 
gaze, in all their ghastliness, God suffers no diminu- 
tion of His infinite sanctity. His antipathy to 
evil is never brought down from its pure summit. 
Upon the evil-doer now, as of yore, His wrath is 
borne in with the mortal sharpness of Sinai's 
sword of lightning, the stubborn fury of the 
deluge and the deadliness of the fire and brim- 
stone that fell in showers on Sodom, if we only 
knew. Toward evil His is a heart of adamant, 
whilst to the sinner it is soft as fleece. God's 
light shines with equal radiance upon the just 
and the unjust ; upon the gentle lamb of goodness 
and the poisonous reptile of evil. To use or 



man's responsibility for his sins. 173, 

abuse the power God gives us is ours ; for, we 
are grandly free. God's earth will bear the 
cockle ; at her breast will it drink the strength 
of its subsistence, side by side with the wheat. 
But God disowns the evil — "An enemy hath 
done this," and yet permits it: "Let both grow 
until the harvest." (Matt., xiii., 28-30.) 

God has placed before us good and evil, life 
and death : His light shows us the way ; but it 
does not prompt us to evil, nor move us on. By 
no means may it compel us. The light of heaven 
that shines upon our evil way has no share in 
our moral actions, but in silence stares, and shall 
bear witness of our election. Our will is free. 

The marauder will not charge his midnight 
depredations, nor the libertine his lewdness, nor 
the drunkard his orgies, to the pale and dumb 
moon. It pours its quiet beams into their cham- 
bers as well. It lighted up the way to chapel, 
home and temperate slumber. God foresees the 
harassing spectacle of red assassination, the 
shameless harlotage that traffics in uncleanness, 
the world's fetid pollution to the end. His 
prophetic omniscience unveiled the picture of the 
future, with all its lights and shades, yet He is 
not neutral — He clearly foresaw, but predestinates 
none of these things. What more could He have 
done, or do, to check evil, and not lay violent 
hands on human liberty ; for, by soft pleading, 
by more forcible counsel, by stern commandment, 
and by terrible threats, He has always dissuaded 
the sinner from evil and impending doom. But 

K 



174 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

whether it be in His justice or in His love, God's 
glory must be promoted by man's liberty. Per- 
verse, selfish, one-sided, man, I know, questions 
the value of this liberty, because of his own 
cowardice in the face of virtue, and calculates 
only the possibility of damnation. But the 
rapturous beauties of God's love spread out 
before the glorified vision of our hope, now 
bursting into glad song, now melting into gladder 
silence of eternal adoration, or the terrible beauties 
of His justice, resolving itself into a million shapes 
of variegated and eternal torture in the dread abyss 
— His love or His justice — which? 'Tis thy right 
and privilege to do so. Choose, man ! 

In the two attributes of love and justice God 
is equally adorable. Elect thy way, abide the 
consequences of thy free election. Choose Love 
and Love's dwelling, — heaven, and 'virtue' will 
be the test of the election ; or choose Justice and 
her troublous abode at the easy but terrible cost of 
'sin.' God's glory will accrue from either choice 
and all things. Out of the very shadow of Adam's 
sin, the Star of Bethlehem rose up and faces of 
light looked down upon the darkened earth, as 
angel lips told in song the coming of the Light of 
the World. God transformed the cruelties of 
threir persecutors into the shining glories of the 
martyrs and the triumphs of virtue. Now He 
turns the injustices, cruelties and adversities of 
our life into instruments that fashion us into 
saints. The wrongs we do are but our own; for, 
not on towers of stone nor on the fated grandeur 



man's responsibility for his sins. 175 

of Solomon's temple, nor on habitations of wood, 
did those hot and blessed tears fall, that rolled 
out of those sweet and tender eyes of the Master 
as He looked from a neighboring hill upon Jeru- 
salem, His body trembling with the emotion of 
His grief: Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! 

Not, I say, on the senseless steeple doomed to 
near ruin, nor on the ancient streets and lanes 
soon to feel the impress of blood and carnage ; 
not on the unthinking brutes, nor upon the whole 
scene that filled the physical eye, did this heaven 
of grief break out as it were in torrents of tears ; 
but, upon the vast and boundless city of the 
Jerusalem of the world. Upon the world's guilt 
it burst forth in majestic pity — your sins and mine 
included in the mass of iniquity from Eve's con- 
sent till the last human thought, for a lasting testi- 
mony of God's love, a pledge of His compassion 
and of His deep and unflagging aversion to sin. 
To blasphemous effrontery too, is added consum- 
mate cowardice when man will lay directly or 
by insinuation upon the shoulders of the Lord — 
'the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the 
world' — the responsibilities of his own evils. 

It is not brave to offend God, but rather ingrati- 
tude, rank injustice and moral cowardice. It is 
honorable to stand up in the Courts of the Lord 
and with manly and virtuous contrition admit our 
guilt ; for, there is a sure power, force and charm 
in truth which God cannot resist. It would spoil 
a true boy's chivalry to lay upon a playmate the 
responsibility of a prank or folly at school. A 



176 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

knave it is who commits a large crime, lays it at a 
neighbor's door and calmly watches him led to 
prison or the gallows. 

Who shall lay upon a loving, all holy and just 
God the cause of his sins? Who shall tell the 
purple stripes on the back and shoulders of Jesus 
Christ and listen to the thought that He deserved 
them for His own sins, or fancy that God was the 
author of them? "Which of you shall accuse Me 
of sin?" Who shall say that God countenances 
evil, or connives at iniquity, because He suffers 
human liberty, if but one man use it aright, or if 
even none shall be found qualified for salvation 
owing to their abuse of it? — "Let no man when 
he is tempted say that he is tempted of God ; for 
God is not a tempter of evils, and he tempteth no 
man. But every man is tempted, being drawn 
away by his own concupiscence and allured. " (St. 
James, 1, 13.) 

St. Basil pertinently observes : "The man who 
asserts there is no God, is duly adjudged void of 
all mind and prudence. The same is to be said 
of the equally stupid individual who should say 
that God is the cause of evils ; for, these two, I 
verily believe, commit an identical offence, — the 
former when he holds that God simply does not 
exist, the latter when he states that God is not 
good ; for if He is the author of wicked things 
verily He is not good, wherefore in the two 
instances there is clearly a negation of God." 
Are we sensible of the tremendous responsibilities 
of our wicked actions? Say if it be a full con- 



man's responsibility for his sims. 177 

sciousness or but a dreamy, half-realization. That 
we are responsible as men for our actions is 
beyond dispute. Were this not so, we are reputed 
unpunishable by the laws of State and qualified 
as insane. The faintest reflection on your sanity 
would fret your feelings. You freely agree to all 
consequences of your human actions as they 
affect this world. But has not some elfish spirit 
whispered to you that you could not help the sins 
you committed? Responsible before men, not 
responsible before God ; sane before the tribunals 
of earth, insane before the judgment seat of God. 
Are you aware that you are answerable for your 
sins ; or, tainted by the latest trick of the age, do 
you affect to hide from God, as you hide from 
fallible earthly judges, and vainly strive to conceal 
your guilt and perversity under the gauze of 
affected insanity and self-delusion? 

Irresponsible ! Aye, the devil's new opiate 
to the conscience, but impotent to soothe, and 
a certain excitant of more grewsome horrors. 
God knows the truth. He will judge if we be 
responsible and in how far we are so — "Thou 
wouldst easily detect what I conceal," says David 
to God. We may deceive ourselves, but self- 
deception does not render us irresponsible nor 
unpunishable. 

• The blind man of Quinquagesima Sunday was 
cured of his blindness. — " Ignorance is bliss, 'tis 
folly to be wise." Do we not love our blindness, 
and foster it, and refuse all remedy for removing 
it? — "Lord, that I may see." Who, then, is 



178 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

responsible for our blindness and the certain fall 
into perdition? Ourselves. 

We are free. Upon the foundation of our 
liberty we rear a structure of holiness which we, 
by God's ordination, may call our own. Being 
free, we choose. With our choice of good or 
evil eventuates merit or demerit, reward or retri- 
bution, a kingdom or servitude, life or death. 
Choose we must. No man can serve two masters. 

O Liberty, thou art double-edged, and hence 
twofold in thy might ! — equal to cut a path to 
glory or to do the bloody deed of self-destruction. 
But who shall blame the weapon of the suicide? 
Unless God permits evil He must abolish our 
liberty, and lo, the sad spectacle of unfree ser- 
vice, actions without merit, the soul without sanc- 
tity and no glory from man unto God. The 
groans and curses of the reproved souls will 
revile the liberty they so abused, but hymns of 
laud and gratitude to God will ring through the 
courts of beatitude, for the liberty of the human 
will that won for myriad souls the laurel of true 
glory in Sion. 

The health that by its abuse furnished the phys- 
ical power employed in the sins of the gorman- 
dizer, the drunkard and the libertine, by its wise 
disposition, has become the help and instrument 
of piety, penance, temperance and chastity, the 
glory of God -and of saints ; for, man can conse- 
crate or desecrate God's bounteous gifts. 

The same key of angelic liberty opened the 
door to the wicked and rebellious spirits of 



man's responsibility for his sins. 179 

heaven, and locked forever in glory the angels 
that stood ; for, the angels themselves held the 
key. 

In vain we look without for the source of our 
sins and follies. The will of a man is a holy of 
holies, a citadel where no one may enter by vio- 
lence and dethrone the freedom of our actions. 
Lucifer, in the fullest blaze of glory, wisdom and 
strength, could not compel consent from Beelze- 
bub or Belial. Their free consent alone drew 
upon them the catastrophe of voluntary rebellion, 
and their share in the vengeance of God on the 
great arch-rebel. 

Though it woo and plead and threaten, sin 
cannot enter the soul till our will, in queenly 
authority, order the gates unbarred. The good 
angels were not more free nor less so than the 
winged rebels who coveted the very throne of 
Jehovah, and were banished from heaven. 

The prophecy of Simeon defends liberty and 
warns us against the abuse of God's gifts. He 
held the Child Jesus in his quivering arms, and 
in a low voice, broken with age, but with solemn 
vigor, his venerable lips announced that the Child 
was set up for ' the rise and fall of many in 
Israel.' To such as embrace Christ's principles 
and follow in His ways, He is a blessing. For 
those who turn from Him and freely elect the 
broad way, God's vows against evil ones, He 
spoke by Simeon's trembling lips, God shall keep, 
when liberty shall, by man's own perverse will, 
have turned into poison. Listen to the words of 



l8o AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Our Lord. How ready and eager to forgive ; 
how tenderly He tells of His love ! See His 
Sacred Heart wax full with His mercy and then 
hear the heavy sigh as He despairs of our per- 
verse will, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent 
unto thee ! How often would I have gathered 
together thy children as the hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not" 

The Master would have us, if we will, near His 
heart, there to be warmed near the fires of His 
eternal love ; and yet, we will compel Him to 
pour out upon us the vials of His wrath, to be 
concealed in the bosom of His justice till the 
* great day.' Yes, till then we are free — O lib- 
erty, in thee I rise or fall ! 

" Unless ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man 
and drink His Blood ye shall not have life in ye." 

The. sacrament of the altar meant life or dam- 
nation to the Apostles. They were free to accept 
or reject, to eat or decline the Supper. Upon 
His uttering the doctrine many Jews withdrew 
from Jesus as their fancy wove visions of mangled 
flesh. The Master did not coerce them, within 
or without. He left them their full freedom. 
The Apostles were free. Jesus asked them their 
choice, "Do you wish to go?" Life and death 
were in the balance. Man's own free will must 
touch the scale that determines his fate — " the 
rise or fall of many in Israel." 

It was a dreadful moment for Peter and his 
companions. Jesus declares their freedom to 



man's responsibility for his sins. 181 

choose. They knew they were responsible for 
either eternity — the sad one or the happy. Peter 
and his partners chose freely Jesus and the 
faith. — Happily or unhappily, indeed, we are 
wisely free. 

Neither must we lay the culpability of our 
offences upon our neighbor. In vain did Eve 
avow the serpent did beguile her. Willing, for- 
sooth, to subscribe to the deed, but earnestly 
laying the blame of her actions upon the serpent. 
But Eve was free, and God knew no power could 
have forced her will. Freely she disobeyed God, 
and justly to this day the groans of our mothers, 
whilst they bring us forth, constantly remind us 
of our mother's voluntary guilt and responsibility 
for her own sin. 

The seductive charms of Eve we will allow ; 
yet neither guile nor violence, nor both, place 
man beyond the pale of responsibility ; for, God 
does not tempt us beyond our strength; so in 
vain did Adam insinuate Eve's blame for his own 
action, saying to the Lord that the woman gave 
it him to eat. The attractive grace and love of 
woman were designed for government and not 
for his adoration or subjection. He was free to 
choose either God or the woman. 

To-day we are paying the portion that our gen- 
eration has to assume, out of the general debt of 
punishment contracted by the Root of Mankind 
and the common father of us all when he sinned. 

Two thieves hung riveted by the side of the 
.Master. The one was a trained miscreant, who 



1 82 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

felt no responsibility for his sins. Hardened in 
vice, the soft, waxen disposition of youth became 
in him as unimpressionable as granite. As he 
lay there he inwardly abused God for having 
created him. He scorned responsibility. He 
gnashed his teeth at fate, and would not own any 
share in the culpability of his present situation. 
The justice of it never vexed his dreams. Yes,. 
this is the accustomed way of criminals, to drown 
all guilt or to lay the blame anywhere but where 
it belongs — in their own perverse wills. 

If the impenitent thief had realized his offences, 
fear of God would have seized upon his soul. 
Thus the penitent thief argues. For when his 
companion had just blasphemed God he repri- 
manded him: ''Neither dost thou fear God?" 
Now, the penitent thief recognized his own 
responsibility ; he did not blame God in the dis- 
guise of fate, nor curse his birth and the parents 
that bore him ; nor his partners in guilt, harlots 
or thieves, nor his health nor liberty, nor any 
creature ; but, with manly and quiet dignity, laid 
the blame upon his own soul. In truth, faith 
and contrition he avowed his guilt. In kindness 
he bore down on his companion to confess his 
sins, as a prelude to pardon: "And we indeed 
justly" (are under condemnation) "for we 
receive the due reward of our deeds." Grandly 
shouldering the weight of his own sins, he 
exonerates God from any participation in his 
wickedness: "But this man hath done no evil." 
Behold, then, the morning star of penance, the 



man's responsibility for his sins. 183 

gray dawn of forgiveness, the true philosophy of 
Lent. In the shadow of the Cross, with fasting, 
prayers and tears, we acknowledge our sins 
against God, and confess the many wrongs we 
have done to Him Who cheerfully gave His blood 
for us. The penitent thief confessed his sins — 
" We receive the due reward of our deeds." 
Jesus was his confessor. He asks for absolution : 
" Lord, remember me when Thou shall come into 
Thy kingdom." The humble soul did not dream 
of his fitness for immediate pardon then and 
there, and speedy glory, but His Confessor gave 
him absolution. Jesus, the Model of confessors, 
the Father, the Shepherd, did not postpone 
forgiveness, with such humble confession and 
compunction, but there and then imparts absolu- 
tion to His dying penitent, beneath the blue 
heavens, in the midst of His murderers, as the 
shadows of death were deepening on His own 
sweet face. "Amen, I say to thee, this day 
thou shalt be with Me in paradise." 

The character of this holy season is breathed 
forth in the tearful measures and sombre chords 
of the Miserere, that tells the story of a prophet's 
sins and sorrows — of royal vanity and warm lust, 
of confession and pardon. We, too, will turn 
our eyes inward. We will go into the quiet 
chamber of our soul alone with the Divine 
Physician, God, and lay bare before Him the 
miseries and infirmities of our life. We bid fare- 
well to dangerous places, persons and habits — 
" Depart from Me ye workers of iniquity." 



184 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Each shall say, "I have acknowledged my sins, 
and my injustice I have not concealed." 

This is the time appointed by God for new mer- 
cies. The present one is the hour ; tomorrow is 
too late, for to-night we die. Now on earth where 
mercy reigns, for "who," says David, "shall 
confess to thee in hell ?" Let us labor in our groan- 
ings, and wash our beds and water them with 
our tears. If we say with David : "I will confess 
against myself my injustice to the Lord," then too 
we may say to God: "Thou hast forgiven the 
wickedness of my sins." 

The tears of Jesus and the water that welled 
from His lance-opened side will flow in upon our 
naked and sinful hearts — "Thou shalt sprinkle 
me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed ; Thou 
shalt wash me and I shall be made whiter than 
snow." 

We will banish ourselves as lepers to the desert 
of the Lenten solitude to find Jesus, and uncover 
our leprosy to Him. Jesus, Son of David, have 
mercy ! — cleanse me. Rise from thy bed of sand 
and pillow of pebbles and lay Thy pale and emaci- 
ated hand upon my poor heart. 

Within the gates, in the day and watches of the 
night, the voices of priests and monks, prostrate 
between the vestibule and altar, shall go up in 
clouds of incense and storm the tabernacle of 
mercy in the piteous words of Joel: "Spare, O 
Lord, spare Thy people." 

The judgments of Edom in the vision of Abdias 
threatens our pride — "Though thou be exalted as 



MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS SINS. 1 85 

an eagle and thou set thy nest among the stars, 
thence will I bring thee down," saith the Lord. 

The grim verdict of God against Ninive is 
pronounced, and the voice of the Church as of 
the Prophet Jonas is lifted for penance to escape 
the execution of God's vengeance on sinners. 
" Let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth 
and cry out to the Lord with all their strength and 
let them turn every one from his evil way." God 
saw their works and had mercy, when the Nini- 
vites had done well their Lent. 

God will not smite the lowly penitent in humil- 
ity and compunction, confessing his sins and 
asking for forgiveness. Brethren, be penitent: 
Ye Ninivites of to-day do penance, for the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand. 



1 86 AM I OF THE CHOSEN 



CHAPTER VIII. 

GOD WILLS THE SALVATION OF THE WHOLE 

WORLD. 

OPENING the Holy Scriptures at the Eleventh 
and Twelfth Chapters of the Book of Wisdom, 
Mercy's scented lips seem to part, and to breathe 
in upon the soul the soft and intoxicating odors 
as of the first openings of the rose or the be- 
witching perfume distilled from Arabian plants. 
In vain does the cruel contention of the Calvin- 
ists, or the ruthless and false rigor of the 
Jansenists — whose grim faces of marble in look 
and temper avow the absence of the warm 
fires of charity within the * whitened sepulchres ' 
— aye, thrice in vain do both essay to rob 
us of or even diminish the bright, hopeful, and 
paternal spirit of mercy which pervades our 
sense of religion and sweetens the impressions 
of piety nursed in our breasts with anxious and 
zealous care by Holy Mother Church. Such 
men see a selfish God, a stern Judge, a God only 
just, and would dry up the wells of eternal char- 
ity and stifle the bright flame of hope that glows 
in our hearts. 

The history of Jehovah's dealings with man- 
kind, the life of Jesus and the teaching of the 
Apostles, stand ever in union for love and mercy, 
tenderest pity and sweet forgiveness — for a God, 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 1 87 

and not a demon whose perverse character would 
incline Him to delight in the torture and dismay, 
rather than in the felicity of men. 

The Will of God, that precedes the vision of 
human wrong, rebellions and sins, burns with the 
true and sincere wish for all mankind to attain 
to Heavenly glory, and to win eternal peace. 
That God could create any human being with 
feelings, and, above all, a soul fashioned to His 
own image and likeness, and doom him to inevit- 
able and eternal confusion and suffering, merely 
that justice may contemplate her shadow in the 
red glare of eternal fire, is a preposterous incon- 
gruity and a base imputation put upon the 
hallowed nature of a God Who has exhausted His 
full power of love upon a base, undeserving and 
ungrateful world. God deserves better for His 
having so ardently loved the world as to offer 
His own Son, the One Victim that could redeem 
it. 

And yet, how grand and divine is God's mercy 
all the more impressively and abundantly shown 
from the fact that He bears with such effrontery 
and is still patient toward those who libel His 
love. Yes, He still holds out the right hand of 
fellowship, — the absolving hand, to His slan- 
derers. He stands ready to bestow the kiss of 
peace upon their sinful brows, and to give them 
all, without exception, mercy, grace and pardon : 
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have 
gathered thee under my wings!" — O, sinful 
world, "thou wouldst not." Who will debate 



1 88 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

the forbearance of God toward the impudence of 
those who impiously comment on and slander 
His attributes? Who dares deny that, were it 
His good pleasure, He could, with a single fiat — 
pronounced in less than time, aye, already pro- 
nounced when conceived — destroy the blas- 
phemers, or even the whole world, as Pie visited 
His wrath in the floods of water in ages past 
upon the universe, and in cataracts of fire on 
peoples. 

What if God in the bestowal and distribution 
of His graces puzzles us? Think you it becomes 
mortals to call into question the wisdom and 
justice of God the Lord? The simple word 
spoken to the envious toilers in the vineyard 
should silence forever human judgments and crit- 
icism for all time — " Friend, I do thee no wrong." 
And in very truth, herein, we show our dearth of 
merit and our ugly pride. We, here, assume 
that we deserve the highest rewards and honors, 
and rarely feel we deserve less than any other 
whosoever. Let us know that this is the very 
pride that God loathes, and will deal hardly with. 
Were we indeed truly humble we should not 
compare nor complain, but be content. Mary 
was chosen for the highest honor God could 
bestow on a creature simply because God ' re- 
garded the humility of His handmaid.' During 
the period when the Apostles were so utterly 
human — before Pentecost — they were preoccu- 
pied with the qifestion, who was to be the highest 
in the Master's kingdom ; but Christ set up the 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 1 89 

standard of His selection for honors, and occa- 
sioned some surprise when He decreed that the 
1 least' among them should be the greatest. The 
pride of man is his greatest enemy. We need a 
strong glass to discover a man who says : " Lord, 
I am not worthy." Now the virtue of humility 
must be tested and found strong in us for Christ's 
discipleship and true saintship. When this virtue 
is absent from our piety, there may be philoso- 
phy, but as a Christian religion, it is decidedly 
spurious. 

The foundation of this virtue lies in the prac- 
tical recognition of what God is and how infinite 
He is, on the one hand, and on the other, what 
trifles we are that God 'should be mindful of us.' 

To question the ' ways ' and ' judgments ' of 
God — the former 'unsearchable,' the latter ' in- 
comprehensible,' and confessed to be such by St. 
Paul, — stamps a man as proud, recreant and 
stubborn as our first parents. It is precisely in 
this very way — by mysteries — we are to con- 
fess a broad chasm yawns between the infinite 
wisdom of God and our limited understanding. 
When cast in the dark passages of revelation, we 
Catholics suffer our mind to follow in reverent 
docility the guidance of God in the mystical 
person of His Church, by Him established, and 
authorized to teach with the promise of His ever 
abiding with Her. This is a test, whether we 
would be gods and covet the very prerogatives 
of the Divinity ; for, in God's immeasurable vast- 
ness of wisdom, of power, of love, and the rest, 

L 



I90 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

His divinity lies. If we could comprehend all 
that God may, then we are not the tiny things 
we thought, but gods. From such madness may 
heaven defend us ! 

Here lies that sublime confidence of Catholics, 
their childlike trust, simplicity and humility — 
which is real only in the Catholic Church, — in the 
abiding consciousness of the infinite vastness of 
God and man's own narrowness. The liberty of 
thought or action that leaves out this primary prin- 
ciple is false in its assumption, chaotic and mad in 
its conclusion. It militates against the very idea 
of religion and Christianity. It is the pride of 
man that impels him to extend the domain 
of human liberty and rights beyond reason and 
faith ; and ' having eyes/ men ' see not ' that the one 
grand lesson of Jesus Christ was and is to bring us 
to subjugate our intellect as He followed His Fath- 
er's will and judgment, and to learn of Him that 
He is ' meek and humble of heart.' Humility 
as a virtue operates only in the Catholic Church. 
With us it is a real thing — not a false, superficial 
vocalization or a pathetic apostrophe of Lord ! 
Lord ! or any action that a man might play ; but 
on the contrary, a genuine and solid humility of 
the intellect by faith, and that a real, definite, 
tangible faith ; and a real humility of the heart 
by obedience to laws above our very nature : "Not 
every man that says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the 
kingdom of heaven." The Scribes and Phari- 
sees told long prayers. To be pure is beautiful, 
to be patient and charitable is admirable — to be 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 191 

humble in mind and heart is the very essence 
of religion. When we know Christ has revealed 
a truth, and the Church proposes it for our belief, 
even though it surpass our understanding, we be- 
lieve more firmly than if we saw with our own eyes 
that it is true. Our eyes may deceive us, but 
Christ is the Truth, and the Church is the pillar 
and the ground of truth. True humility as a 
virtue is not found outside the Catholic Faith. 
Call us slaves, call us dupes, revile us for it, spit 
upon us for our faith, slay us — the Founder of 
our Faith bore all these reproaches. He foretold 
it; we accept it: "They shall drag you before 
princes, — but the disciple is not greater than 
the Master." It is hard to be humble, but a 
religion that leaves pride unvanquished in us is 
false. The religion that loves and fosters humil- 
ity (for only the true religion can have it) is the 
Catholic Church, the hated, reviled, jeered at, 
persecuted Church; but, like her Spouse Jesus, 
our friend and our salvation. 

Amongst the savage peoples, grosser but 
less difficult obstacles have to be met and over- 
come by the Church, but in civilized countries 
pride is her greatest obstacle. It was always 
so in the world, and shall be so. Men do not 
care to bow down the mind in faith, and 
yet they delude themselves with the semblances 
and shadows of religion. Isaias will judge these 
men- — "Woe to you that are wise in your own 
eyes, and prudent in your own conceits." In the 
Catholic Church alone, obedience, which is the 



192 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

highest act of Christian humility, is found, in 
truth. 

Christianity, outside the Catholic Church, is a 
medley of sects. The plank of the Reformation 
is smashed into splinters, and the sects are float- 
ing on chips. The explanation is easy. Men 
want to follow their own opinions ; they will not 
obey ; they are proud and want nothing they do 
not care to believe, nothing they do not care to 
practise — 'My will be done, not Thy will be 
done.' The multiplicity of creeds gives evidence 
of a dismal notion of subjection and authority. 
It is easier to fast, to be chaste, or sometimes to 
suffer death, than to be humble and renounce 
one's own judgments. Take it or leave it, this is 
at the root of true religion, and the life-blood 
of Christianity. Now we may proceed to our 
theme. 

God is not a respecter of persons — His good- 
ness and mercy are for all : " For Thou lovest all 
things, and hatest none of the things which Thou 
hast made, for Thou didst not appoint or make 
anything hating it," says Wisdom. God precludes 
none from the fountain of clemency — "But Thou 
hast mercy upon all, because Thou canst do all 
things and overlook the sins of men for the sake 
of repentance." Are none, then, in the world 
denied it, from the Eskimo to the Patagonian, 
from the Celt to the Islander of the East? Are 
none in the frozen mountains of the North, in the 
jungles of the tropical climes, — the Indian, the 
African, the Mongol — are none at all shut out from 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 1 93 

it? Nay, the very variety, as in other things, 
makes up the beauty of mercy. "Thou sparest 
all, because they are Thine, O Lord, Who lovest 
souls, " says Wisdom. 

It is true that God chastises, but the unyielding 
hardness of men forces Him to it. God's justice 
aids His mercy by an ache of body, or a touch 
of mortal anguish, a small or a larger calamity, 
but Justice does not take the rein out of Mercy's 
hand until men will not be guided by her sweet 
government, and therefore — " Thou chastisest 
them that err by little and little, and admonishest 
them, and speakest to them concerning the 
things wherein they offend, that leaving their 
wickedness they may believe in Thee, O Lord. 
In judging, Thou givest place for repentance." 

Though Jesus Christ is the Saviour, ' especially 
of the faithful' (Tim. iv., 10), He is the propitia- 
tion, 'not for our sins alone, but for those of the 
whole world.' God undoubtedly must love those 
for whom He shed His blood, and St. Paul 
assures us that ' Christ died for all.' (Cor. v., 15.) 
Yes, He died to save the souls of those men who 
are now in hell. Their evil doom is their own 
election: "Walk in the light of your fire and in 
the flames which you have kindled," spake the 
deep voice of Isaias to the damned. 

The Council of Aries, that sat in the year 475, 
put its anathema against the person who would 
maintain that Christ has not offered Himself up 
for all men, nor wished all to be saved. " But 
why insist on the fact?" I hear you say. Whj' 



194 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

did Paul and the troop of Fathers dilate upon 
it? Weigh the truth. St. Jerome has it: " John 
the Baptist did not speak the truth when he 
pointed at Christ with his finger, and suited the 
words to the action : ' Behold the Lamb of God, 
Who taketh away the sins of the world ! ' if any 
are yet in the world whose sins Christ has not 
taken away. Either they must be shown to be not 
of the world, or Christ's pardon has not reached 
them ; or, if indeed they be of this world, one or 
the other thing takes place ; namely, those freed 
from sin proclaim Christ's power ; those not 
delivered show, as it were, the weakness of Christ's 
Passion. Far be it from us to believe that He is 
powerless in aught." Prosper, who is reputed as 
the most devout pupil of St. Augustine, and the 
leading exponent of this great Father, is heard 
on the point: "God exercises a care over all men. 
There is no one to whom the Gospel is unsuited, 
or the observance of the law is not adapted, or to 
whom the very nature of man does not belong. 
Consequently there is no sound reason for urging 
the intrinsic impropriety of Christ's dying for all 
men. On the contrary, there is every reason to 
believe that His Heart of mercy is open to every 
being with a human nature, — Preach the Gospel 
to every creature." Again, you ask, why dwell 
on a truth we know well enough? Verily, you 
know — not so, well enough. Your persuasion is 
not the deep realization of consequences ; it is 
not a firm pedestal to sustain the weighty con- 
clusion that emanates from the sublime truth ; it 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 1 95 

is not a worthy prelude that leads you right on to 
the noble duty Christianity lays upon you. And 
what is this? — the loving brotherhood of true 
charity, love of God, compassion for Christ, and 
sympathy for all men — a real, living interest in 
the world for which Christ died. In one word* 
we should pray for all men, because God yearns 
for the eternal health of all the children of men. 
Have you observed this obligation well? Do you 
realize that this duty means salvation for others? 
" I desire, therefore, brethren, first of all, that 
supplication, prayers, intercessions and thanks- 
givings be made for tf// men," says St. Paul. We 
have a relationship with the whole world, the 
creatures of one Creator, the children of one 
father, Adam ; for there is one God, says St. 
Paul. So should the world be of one mind, one- 
faith, ' for one is your Master, Christ,' (Matt, 
xxiii., 10), and one heart in love. Alas ! the 
family unity is broken, and we owe it to God, to 
our neighbor and to ourselves to gather up by St. 
Paul's apostleship of prayers, the scattered frag- 
ments of religious unity, and make of the world 
one family in Christ to match the idea of one 
God, and fulfil the supreme wish of the Lord. 
This is in our power, or St. Paul, or our own Leo, 
had not asked us to pray for unity. By the 
accomplishment of this duty we can reach also 
the delinquent brethren within the pale of the 
Church. We know that the soft showers of the 
mercy of Christ will come upon their souls, which 
are as earth without water, and will refresh them. 



196 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

We lounge in our easy chairs and gossip. The 
wickedness of our brother is a dainty morsel for 
our social repast. It sweetens our afternoon 
teas. If we would spend the time we now give 
to useless, if not sinful comment, in pleadings 
for mercy, how much more of general good would 
be accomplished, and how much less of scandal 
would mar our social life? 

What love for souls, and what compassion for 
Jesus Christ is revealed in the words addressed to 
the Corinthians, and also to us. The Apostle 
appeals to our brotherly love, sympathy for the 
weak and the chivalry of our faith. "And through 
thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for 
whom Christ died?" The sight of unbelief and 
impiety, so widespread, in view of God's desire 
for the world's salvation, cannot but make one 
feel that, had the virtuous acquitted themselves of 
the obligation of prayer the world would be better ; 
and howsoever more or less, yet surely still better 
if you and I had done our part. Ah, you say, 
your prayers cannot do such wonders. Indeed, 
you are more humble than the humble ; but you 
must know that it is God Who has given you the 
privilege, and you may truly say : "I can do all 
things — in Him that strengtheneth me." Still you 
are languid and do not pour out your soul for the 
world threatened with God's just judgment; but it 
is not your humility that restrains you from the 
kindly deed — which would be a false humility and 
the worst kind of pride ; it is your apathy or your 
want of charity, for which you may expect that 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 1 97 

as you have done unto others you shall be done 
by. It is criminal egotism to shut ourselves up 
in our own concerns, and by a sort of spiritual 
aristocracy bar out the commoners from our 
interest. The world ought to be one family in 
Christ, in faith, hope and love. While you kneel 
on your nicely upholstered frie-dien and raise 
your jewelled hands to God in houses of earthly 
comfort and fashion, bethink you betimes of 
God's love and mercy. His life and blood are for 
all. So let sweet charity, angel of mercy, bear 
away your thoughts to the recesses of dark 
continents, and whereas till now you have 
remembered only your nearer kinsman, you shall 
henceforth with new zeal recall your absent kins- 
man in the unclothed Hottentot in his kraal. 

God's mercy is not restricted to one person, but 
His mercy is held out to every sinner. Where 
does God's record tell of a single instance when 
He was deaf to the penitent and confessant? How 
often in the Old Law God has pardoned capricious 
Israel ? We cannot comprehend how God endured 
their inconstancy and ingratitude, and made their 
onward march a veriest path of wonders and signs 
of merciful care. Who of you is worse than Man- 
asses, patron of magic, idolater, an unclean and 
cruel man? Who of you is as wicked as Achab, 
also a king of Juda, a worshipper of Belial, perse- 
cutor of Elias, killer of prophets, and slayer of 
Naboth? Yet, Manasses and Achab did penance 
and were forgiven. David's double sin was incal- 
culable in its effects upon a numerous kingdom, 



198 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

but God was moved by the contrite and humble 
heart of the royal sinner, and forgave all. The 
Chanaanites — "Murderers of their own children, 
and eaters of men's bowels," a "cursed seed from 
the beginning," and sorcerers: a nation that "the 
Lord did abhor," says Solomon ; and yet O Lord, 
"Thou gavest them place of repentance," says 
Wisdom. How so your sins for number and 
enormity: Is yours the concentrated guilt of the 
Chanaanite and the Ninivite? God is anxious to 
pardon you, and on the day of your forgiveness a 
new song will be sung in heaven. "Lift up thy 
voice with strength, thou that bringest good tid- 
ings to Jerusalem," says Isaias, "speak to the heart 
of Jerusalem, and call to her ; for her evil is come 
to an end ; her iniquity is forgiven ; she hath 
received of the Hands of the Lord double for all 
her sins." Do you doubt? What are your sins? 
Are you unchaste? Recall the adulteress brought 
fresh from her crime and reeking with her shame. 
The law of Israel said death unto her ; Christ ten- 
derly forgave her. Men said : "Wretch ! " Christ's 
merciful voice said : "My child." 

Zaccheus was a thorough man of the world, 
good liver, of fastidious palate, likely a con- 
noisseur of wine. He had climbed a tree to 
catch a glance of the passing Wonder-Worker. 
The merciful eyes of Jesus went out from their 
natural course to find the sinner concealed in the 
foliage, and with adorable simplicity and paternal 
familiarity Christ invites Himself to the world- 
ling's home for dinner. So, now, if men will for- 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 1 99 

sake their wicked pastimes, God, the Father of 
all, will take them home again to His Heart and 
Love. 

Magdalen was a notorious woman. The vir- 
tuous men simply averted their eyes without 
affectation ; hypocrites frowned upon her ; chaste 
women merely blushed ; cruel spinsters gathered 
in their skirts as the unfortunate wretch passed 
by. How earnestly does the world know that 
Christ came for such as Magdalen, that His eyes 
looked softest and loveliest, when they fell upon 
the sinner. Magdalen was, then, a shining mark 
which mercy courted : with the silent eloquence 
that utters no syllable, in the divine language of 
the heart, in tears she confessed and received 
the pardon of her God. Strange to unravel, but 
true withal, the natural qualities of sinners are 
oftenest of a higher order, than those of the 
good and virtuous ; they are often more brilliant, 
more tender and more true, though they mis- 
apply their exalted gifts and fine traits. Christ 
comforted the penitent woman. Shall the Mas- 
ter's feet retain the odor of Magdalen's unguents 
for the penitent's glory? At all events the Cross 
and the Sepulchre shall tell of a devotion to 
Jesus that was never surpassed save by the Mes- 
siah's Virgin Mother. 

He who, though all should fail the Master in 
His dark hour swore his fealty, denied the Master 
outright, and with the irreverence of an oath 
deepened the guilt of his apostasy. If Csesar had 
a right to exclaim: "And thou, Brutus!" over 



200 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

man's ingratitude to man, how aptly might Jesus 
have spoken the word, — And thou, Peter! But 
the look of the Master had an authority in it to 
speak, to move. The same sympathetic, ever 
adorable eyes were bent now upon the apostate. In 
the red gloom of the burning brazier the love-lights 
of the Master's eyes were reflected upon Peter's, 
and as burning arrows of love pierced his heart. 

Those eyes of the Redeemer cannot rest, for 
being doomed by Eternal Love to be twin 
wanderers over the face of the earth whilst one 
soul is yet unconverted. How strangely perverse 
we are ! In earthly loves wooers are too swift 
to believe the avowals of tender feeling. To 
distrust would be a heresy in gallantry, we 
are told, and yet we doubt the protestations of 
Eternal Love in the face of infallible tokens. 
Why will man be so much sooner impressed with 
God's justice, — that God is just and will surely 
punish, rather than that He is Love itself and for- 
giving? Alas! we are not lovers of Christ. 
The saints dwell upon Christ's love and believe 
in it always, for they are lovers of Jesus, whilst 
we only fear, and our fear is not yet grown to 
the perfection of loving Christ. Fear is much, 
the beginning of wisdom ; it grows to wisdom, 
and the highest wisdom is the love of God ; but 
as yet we linger with Israel on the verge of Sinai 
and have not come to Thabor. We have found 
Jehovah, but not Christ. 

Judas, darkest of the guilty ! The Lord saw 
his guilt gathering like a storm in the traitor's 



SALVATION IS FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. 201 

bosom that was soon to break forth and bear 
him away in a sea of violence. He washed the 
plotter's feet. He called the thief friend, kissed 
the murderer, in the hope, as it were, that the 
Divine lips might move the sinner's heart. Christ 
gave Himself entirely to the unfaithful Apostle, 
His flesh and blood in Holy Communion, on the 
very eve of the fatal day— for Judas, — that 
records the worst deed of human villainy and 
the noblest act of Divine mercy. 

Judas would yet have been saved for the mere 
asking of forgiveness. To have destroyed his 
Master was a great sin ; to have doubted God's 
mercy and willingness to forgive any sin or num- 
ber of sins, was a denial of the very character of 
Christ. It is this crime that keeps the traitor's 
memory shrouded in the gloom of the suicide's 
grave, before which we pause and grow sad. 

Judas Iscariot, and you, my friend, who dis- 
trusted Christ's mercy, what a guilt is yours ! 
You would rob the world of its only hope, the 
Crucifix. But no ! Christ's prayer in behalf of 
His slayers was offered for us, too, and for all 
time. How sweet, how comforting, how merci- 
ful, how divinely the music of the words will 
charm our dying senses, " Father forgive them ! " 



202 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DANGER OF PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 

Within the pale of the Church, the human 
soul, in all storms that sweep across her intellect, 
in the force of heavy seas of doubt and specula- 
tion, finds safe moorings in the firm, indissoluble 
chain of faith under the shelter of Peter's Rock. 
In the natural restlessness and caprice of our 
nature, like a ship in the cover of the haven, the 
soul will toss and lean ; but, secure in the fixedness 
of Christian principles, she may mock the sea in 
her foaming wrath. In solemn and tragic gran- 
deur the principle of human freedom stands out 
among the dogmas of our Faith — tremendous 
trust, an awful gift, a rock to shelter or to ruin. 
God's grace is freely vouchsafed us, and it is 
within the boundaries of our human prerogative 
to give it our assent, to guard it and esteem it as 
precious ; or, to deny it our assent, reject and 
disown it for the pearl it is, and the ransom of 
Christ's blood. 

Our paternal faith sweetly assures us of God's 
passionate will to have us attain to salvation ; but 
that same faith reminds us that in spite of this, 
salvation cannot be accomplished unless with our 
own co-operation, and by our own merits, that 
accrue from human liberty. Unquestionably, the 
grace of God is the beginning and the primary 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 203 

source of our salvation. Sweetly and lovingly is 
it violent at times in its action upon our will ; but 
it remains ever true that the act which brings 
about our conversion, and corresponds with the 
grace of God in thought, word and deed, is a free 
act. God looks for this free co-operation, with 
assent to, and compliance with grace at the 
hands of human liberty: Our own election to 
glory is finally approved, and heaven earned. 

We must act. Inaction means necessarily one 
or the other of two things — shocking indolence 
or cowardice, with a vile surrender. God or 
Belial ! — " No man can serve two masters :" " He 
that is not with Me is against Me ; and he that 
gathereth not with Me scattereth." We cannot 
remain neutral. Passion romps and roars like 
the ' roaring lion that goes about seeking whom 
he may devour.' But we have God with us, 
the pledge of His Name— Emmanuel. Christ 
fought and won : " I have overcome the world." 
It is our turn : we must do what He did. — " I am 
the way — if any man will come after Me." To- 
gether we shall conquer. He will not conquer 
for us ; we cannot win alone. Our forces must 
be linked. "God," says St. Augustine, " created 
us without our co-operation. He will not save us 
without it." " Have confidence," says Jesus, 
but fight I must, though " my enemies live and 
are stronger than I." (Ps. xxxvii.) To conquer 
means to have done battle — " I have fought the 
good fight," says St. Paul. " The disciple is no 
greater than the Master — I have conquered the 



204 A ^ I OF THE CHOSEN. 

world," says Our Lord. Shall you and I be of 
those * who by faith have conquered kingdoms, 
stopped the mouths of lions?' Alas, brethren, 
fancy ye, in your tropical indolence, that you 
cannot be lost? You shun the battle, and are 
found in the hedges or clumps of trees, and 
emerge from your cover to clutch the aureole of 
the conqueror, when only ' he that shall over- 
come shall be clothed in white garments.' In the 
delirium of your horrible presumption, you fancy 
that you cannot be lost because you have the 
faith and are enrolled on the Book of Life. The 
name of the traitor Judas was entered on those 
pages, and instead of the red cross that sealed his 
predestination, the Blood of Christ has drawn a 
dark line across the suicide's name. 

You cannot be lost ! Be warned, that the con- 
dition of your future happiness be not sunk in 
oblivion. " He that shall overcome .... I 
will not blot out his name out of the Book of 
Life. (Apoc. iii, 5.) 

" The kingdom of God is within you." 
What does this widespread lethargy of Catholic 
piety reveal ? What does this indifference to the 
sacraments of vast numbers signify? Aye, what 
does their bitter coldness confess? what does 
their irreligious indevotion avow? What does 
their tepid inaction say? It says the Lord has 
set them apart for glory ; the verdict is pro- 
nounced, and they cannot be lost howsoever 
their inaction. Yes, but that verdict must be 
signed by two names, God's and your own, and 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 205 

not sealed until your co-operation has been 
crowned with perseverance. The seal is the seal 
of your tomb. Religious indifference reads thus : 
We need not light to win; we need not run to 
capture the prize. In theory these drones would 
disavow the Kismet of the Mohammedan or the 
Spinozan or Spencerian fatalism of some modern 
philosopher ; but what is their practice but the 
denial of the necessity of their sharing in the 
work of salvation? — a negation of personal and 
free co-operation as an integral part of the grand 
work of shaping their immortal future. The 
freedom of the human will is ignored in religious 
indifference, when upon it, as upon a foundation, 
rests the value or merit of human action. The 
alarms of the watchman are not found in their 
disposition, though the Master has plainly said : 
"Watch and pray." 

The religious fatalists live out the day and the 
night in the passiveness of dreams, — to whom 
real freedom is an unreality. They have nothing 
positive to do. Things present themselves to 
their minds and pass on to their wills for approba- 
tion or disapprobation, but they are dreaming — 
" Sleep on." Where, I ask, are the alarms in the 
lives of the Catholic multitudes standing between 
the two eternities — the ever-burning flames of 
hell, and the sweet entrancing beatitude to be 
found everlastingly in God, when a thought may 
determine? How do their lives show that it is 
in their own hands, to be crowned or lost? In 
the fixedness of destiny they repose in a placid 



206 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

indifference and sphinx-like stolidity. They 
touch their lutes, and sleep in the forest, where 
wild beasts roam and pant for blood, but these 
foolish minstrels have not the wise huntsman's 
fears, 'lest,' as David says, 'at any time my 
enemies rejoice over me.' Cast into the tide and 
onward hurry of human events, they claim no 
hand in the direction of their destinies, but resign 
themselves passively to a fate. 

In the storm on the lake, the Apostles were 
free to survive or perish. They could call upon 
Jesus or not. They chose life : " Save us, O 
Lord, or we perish." Man, having freedom, and 
a voluntary though necessary part in his life, 
here and hereafter, and viewing the economy 
that embraces the condition of his co-operation 
of free action, the wonder of Jesus Christ at his 
indifference must live forever in the words — 
" Why stand ye here all the day idle?" Once a 
year, by law, these words of the Lord are repeated 
throughout the Christian world to awaken our 
slumbering freedom, and stir up our Christian 
activities. 

It depends, I say, upon our free co-operation 
with the merciful projects of our Creator, whether 
eternal happiness or the lasting and tormenting 
flame shall ensue upon our earthly days. The 
thousand thoughts that enter in procession our 
minds each day must be friends or foes. They 
are for good or evil, life or death. Where is 
the censorship of our vigilance? Do you not 
admit these thoughts and entertain them indis- 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 207 

criminately? The Czar of Russia is beheld by 
a million hostile eyes, but this monarch realizes 
his situation, and takes due precaution. The 
palace walls are patrolled by trusted marksmen 
of skill and valor ; the monarch's food is scrutin- 
ized and followed from the slaughter-house or 
the shambles to the monarch's plate. The Czar 
and the Sultan have their dishes eaten of and 
their wines sipped in their presence to defeat the 
assassin ; but with countless unrelenting foes — 
enemies in the garments of friends, wolves in 
sheep's clothing — our immortal souls are sur- 
rounded, and we take no care, and practise little 
or no surveillance. The gates of our palaces are 
left open — our senses, eyes, ears and tongue are 
unguarded. The city of Rome lay in flames. 
So shall the soul of man, the city of God, lie in 
lasting ruins. "An enemy hath done this" — In 
vain will you say so. Christ's words will con- 
found you, — " Watch and pray." 

In the daily Complin, the prayer of God's 
Church reveals the economy of the present and 
the future, when the priests and monks and vir- 
gins pray together: "Save us, O Lord, in our 
watchfulness, guard us in our slumber, that we 
may watch with Christ, and may rest in peace." 
The sad voice comes from the Garden to us ; I 
hear its trembling accents, — "Watch and pray;" 
and we sleep on. Like that king in the drama, 
we are not secure in our dreams. 

It takes time for poison to do its work : " This 
night thy soul will be demanded of thee." Do 



208 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

men realize what it means, ' to suffer the loss of 
one's soul,' or do they, I say, dream they cannot 
be lost? Are they mad enough to trifle with 
the eternal fires, harlequin the justice of God, 
and putting their hand in the lion's mouth, find 
his jaws close upon them? Has indeed the fierce 
truth of hell become to them but a legend? 
Shall not the crackling flames, nor the soft plead- 
ings of Christ in the sacrament of penance, 
and in the tabernacle, bidding all men to 'come 
unto Him,' have power enough to dispel the 
stupor of men? Aye, and that is a deadly stupor 

— indifference, wherein serious facts and stern 
truths dissolve in vagaries, or evaporate into the 
unreality of phantasies. 'Tis twilight and the 
gloaming; eternal night is not far off. The cool 
shadows go before the grim, cold face of eternal 
death. Indifference, coldness to God, inactivity 

— awaken from it, or ye are lost ! 

Moral freedom means election. To elect we 
must know, examine and judge. This is action 

— " Why stand we here all the day idle? " The 
moments pass quickly. Time waits for no man. 
What shall you harvest? Precisely what you 
have sown: "Night cometh on when no man can 
work." The food that lies before us we look 
upon without misgiving; we welcome it to the 
palate, and yet it might prove a traitor to our 
soul, and deliver us up to the demon of wicked 
desires. Yet, we watch not, nor suspect with a 
serpent's prudence. Bestir thyself, Israel ; come 
out quickly from thy drunken stupor, or, like 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 200, 

Holofernes, the sword of death shall cleave thy 
soul in the tents of thy drowsiness. 

Tis solemnly true that from the heights of 
4 His high sanctuary,' God sees the future and 
foreknows our free actions. The drunkard's act 
to-day is foreseen by God, yet God would not 
have foreseen this act of drunkenness had not 
the drunkard chosen the act. Had he chosen 
instead an act of temperance this act would have 
been foreseen. The drunkard's will was free. 
Freely he elected. God was a spectator. But 
why invade the eternal sanctuary? Why open 
the Master's side with the rude lance of curious 
enquiry? Why unveil the Holy of Holies, and 
boldly enter the inner chamber of God, where 
His secrets lie in eternal slumber, and where only 
the Eternal Priest, Jesus Christ, may enter, being 
God ? God loves us and gives us ample grace ; 
we are free — this is enough. Why abandon, then, 
the beaten paths of our fathers, and renounce 
the simple truth, and plain, unabstruse principles 
of the ancients, to be lost in the broad wastes of 
speculation? The Church has not spoken; why 
wander to distant lands, without Bethlehem's star 
to guide our way, for we shall only be bewildered 
by the incomprehensibility of the things that are 
God's. We have, I say, God's grace, and may 
co-operate with it. Beyond these plain facts we 
tear the veil from God's glory, and ought to recall 
the fate of him who touched the ark. We wan- 
der into what St. Augustine calls the ' hidden,' 
the ' lofty ' things, the secrets that are inacces- 



210 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

sible to human knowledge. In simple and pic- 
turesque beauty St. Augustine lays out our path. 
It contains the veritable and infallible element of 
true piety — humble obedience: "My sheep hear 
My voice, but do not question nor discuss it, nor 
debate upon it." We are not gods nor even 
prophets. " Think of the Lord in goodness 
and seek Him in simplicity of heart. He is 
found by them that tempt Him not. For per- 
verse thoughts separate from God." Our whole 
duty lies in fulfilling the condition which the law 
of salvation has attached to our election, that it 
may be honorably a free one. It summons us to 
act with God — "My yoke is sweet" — in the 
performance of good works, in doing the Chris- 
tian battle valiantly. 

" God condemns no one before he sins, and He 
will not crown anyone before he shall have over- 
come," says St. Augustine. "The justice of God 
will not abide with thee unless thou will it. The 
plan of the world's deliverance is salvation by 
man's co-operation." " Grant that I am one of 
the predestinated," says St. Chrysostom, " faith 
teaches that I never can be saved unless I co- 
operate with God — unless I work with God." 

Has liberty no meaning? Man has a part in 
the great work of salvation. Christ has gone 
before and left His footprints. Do we choose to 
follow Him? "If any man will come after Me, 
let him take up his cross and follow Me." Follow 
Him ; He bids you, as He bade Matthew. "Fol- 
low Me;" and you, brethren — "Why stand ye 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 211 

here all the day idle?" The world does not co- 
operate or work with God — " My yoke? God- 
fearing women, youths of good families, pupils 
of Christian schools, many young women, a 
goodly proportion of the married, simple folk, — 
these trudge after Christ, walk in His footsteps, 
bleed with Him, sigh with Him, die with Him 
daily. 

The multitude of men, young and old, choose 
the broad way and industriously avoid the nar- 
row Way of the Cross. To serve two masters is 
their plan; to choose the world, the flesh and 
the devil for life, and elude the devil in death — • 
" Come, let us enjoy the good things that are 
present; let us fill ourselves with costly wines 
and ointments ; let us crown ourselves with roses 
before they are withered ; let no meadow escape 
our riot." (Wisdom ii.) The price of salva- 
tion is too costly. They do not choose to pay 
it. Co-operation, the condition of eternal happi- 
ness, is too burdensome for flesh and blood. To 
placate their consciences, men affect to deny the 
reality of eternal terrors. Deluded Christians, 
your denial of them does not abolish the punish- 
ments of hell. Your wish stands father to your 
thoughts. " Fie ! we are born for nothing and 
our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air." 
" These things they thought and were deceived, 
for their own malice blinded them, and they knew 
not the secrets of God, nor hoped for the wages 
of justice, nor esteemed the honor of holy souls." 
(Wisdom.) 



212 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Why languish in the fallacious dream of eternal 
foresight? Brethren, we are free, and by our 
moral freedom shape, as it were, that foresight. 
We are free to-day to do. God has seen, and sees, 
only what we freely do. To fanc}^ that they 
cannot fail in one moment to snatch their immortal 
souls from the jaws of hell, and to accomplish 
what the saints have striven through many sleep- 
less nights and rough days of anguish, penance 
and blood to achieve, is the hallucination of hosts 
of Catholics, and no delusion is more perilous. 
To have stood idle all the day and hope for the 
reward due to the heat and labor, and not to in- 
dolence and idleness, is assuming that God will 
vouchsafe the grace of the last sacraments, and 
with an irreverent trust, imagining God cannot 
deny it. But the Fathers of the Church are not 
without great fears for such conversions. 

Shall God afford you this desperate opportun- 
ity? He can, He may, but must He? " The 
Christian has no tomorrow," says Tertullian. 
"God has made a promise of forgiveness to your 
penance ; He has not promised a tomorrow to your 
delay," says St. Augustine. So from the beginning, 
the danger of dwelling all day with the devil, 
and hoping too confidently in the last moment to 
take up everlasting lodging with God has made 
our Fathers anxious. St. Augustine goes on : "O 
man, who putteth off thy repentance, perhaps this 
is thy last day." "It happens by the just judg- 
ment of heaven that when a man can be converted 
and refuses, when, perhaps, he wishes it, he 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 213 

cannot be converted," says Innocent II. St. 
Augustine's voice should wend its way through the 
tumult and din of the world, and find the ears of 
everyone of the faithful of God's Church. This 
great saint says : " If a sinner is converted in the 
last of his days, we must not despair of his for- 
giveness ; but since hardly ever or rarely such a 
conversion is real, I hold we must have fears for 
the penitent. If the priest fails to arrive on the 
scene in season to bestow his divine offices of 
mercy and love, what then? There is hope in an 
act of perfect contrition, the end of which is love. 
May we not have anxiety lest fear more than love 
operate as the essence of sorrow in aged delin- 
quents? Lest a soul, for life oblivious of God, 
might not wholly love Him in a twinkling?" 

In such an event the sacrament must have been 
bestowed, and even then fears are not wholly 
unquestionable. Tertullian says : "It is not the 
repentance of their sins that moves the dying, it is 
the warning that death is near." "If you wish to 
do penance when you cannot sin, the sins have 
abandoned you ; you have not abandoned the 
sins," says St. Augustine. In all fairness, is it a 
nice gift to lay upon God's altar — a faded flower, 
a wasted life? Even Seneca asks if we be not 
ashamed to keep all the best for our evil life, and 
set apart for goodness the time which is useless 
for anything else. Still, if it be so, God is merci- 
ful, and the faded flower and the wasted life He 
will accept to-day — to-day. Tomorrow say you ? 
The Christian has no tomorrow. 



214 AM * 0F THE CHOSEN. 

Well, then, we do believe that God has decreed 
glory unto His elected ones, and puts upon their 
temples a diadem woven out of the united merits 
of His own and theirs, His grace and their good 
works ! St. Francis of Sales wrote in this spirit 
to Lessius the theologian, in 1613, asserting that 
he had always considered and held this doctrine 
as more in harmony with the mercy and grace of 
God and an affectionate belief. He says : "There 
are souls now in hell ; all hope is cancelled from 
their bosoms. Who shall say that God arbitrarily, 
and in entire disregard of their own choice of 
moral freedom, doomed them to their sad end? 
It remains for us to believe that God did not 
destine to elect to glory absolutely, but in view of 
the condition to be fulfilled of man's co-operation, 
resolved into the good works wrought at the 
instigation of heavenly grace." 

The universal judgment drawn in St. Matthew 
cannot be looked upon as a mock trial and an 
empty fiction. Judgment is for guilt or innocence. 
Here we must presume a real judgment given for 
weal over men's good actions, or for woe over their 
evil deeds freely done. 

The verdict pronounced upon the chosen shall 
contain the element of their freedom to have 
done or not : " I was hungry, and you gave Me to 
eat." The verdict pronounced upon the damned 
shall illustrate their freedom to have otherwise 
chosen, and base their evil doom upon their own 
demerits and lack of compliance with God's 
grace : " I was hungry, and you gave Me not to 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 21 5 

eat." " Enter," says St. Chrysostom, comment- 
ing on Christ's words to the elect, " into the 
possession of the kingdom which is your own 
inheritance, as it were, your Father's and your 
own, which has been owing you from the begin- 
ning, because I knew you were to be as you are, 
and I prepared this kingdom for you." The 
parables of the workman, of the nuptial garment , 
and of the talents, emphasize the imperative- 
ness of our co-operation, as the condition of our 
election to glory. We must work, we must cul- 
tivate the Christian virtues in our hearts, and 
utilize the gifts of body and of soul God has 
endowed us with. "What seek ye here?" asks 
God, standing at the gates of Paradise. " Heaven, 
eternal life," you answer. Then Christ will say, 
" What have ye done in life to deserve what you 
ask of Me? Each one shall receive his own 
reward according to his labors." Now you, my 
brethren, stand idle in the market-place, basking 
in the sun ; you gaze into space, wrapt in the 
soothing illusions of self-love and spiritual indo- 
lence. Calm within the bowers of every earthly 
pleasure, you nurse the dream of serving two 
masters, the spirit and the flesh, God and man. 
Idlers, the business of heaven awaits your atten- 
tion — abandon all else. Fathers and mothers 
may cry after you, " Whither?" Without abat- 
ing your speed, let the winds bear back the 
answer Christ has drawn up for you: "Know 
you not that I must be about the things that are 
my Father's?" 



2l6 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

The wife of Zebedee craved of the Master in 
behalf of her two sons, the tremendous dignity 
of their sitting, one at His right hand, and the 
other at His left hand in His kingdom. Jesus 
replied: " It is not Mine to give." St. Cyril 
paraphrases the reply — " It is not Mine to give," 
— thus : " Rewards should have a correspondence 
with the endeavor of those who contend for 
them. It is not in my power to seize the highest 
reward and bestow it on whomso I will. He 
should draw it off who beats out all the others 
and merits the honor." This idea of our per- 
sonal merit, and harmony of labors and rewards 
is sustained by St. Augustine. The saint asks: 
" What does it mean — * it is not Mine to give? ' 
I cannot give it to the proud — they were proud 
as yet. If you earnestly wish for the honor, do 
not be as you are. It is prepared for others : be 
these others and the honor is prepared for you." 
" God," says St. Ambrose, ''has predestinated 
the rewards of those whose merits He foresees." 
St. Basil comments on Christ's answer to the wife 
of Zebedee in the following paraphrase : " If 
anyone aspires to My kingdom, and endeavors 
to sit at My right hand, then I look about 
Me carefully to see what I can do for him. I 
demand to see the drops of sweat that are wit- 
nesses to his labors in works of piety ; for, the 
reward of the sweat and the labor is to sit in My 
assembly — for He designates the merits of the 
recipient and the power of the donor as one and 
the same." 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 21 J 

" The lost souls have abandoned, of their own 
free will, the path of goodness. It does not 
follow because they are foreknown to fall, they 
are predestinated ; they would though be predes- 
tinated if they were to return and persevere in. 
holiness," is the remark of Prosper. 

The prayer of God's Church appended to the 
Litany of the Saints touches the question: " Oh 
Almighty and Eternal God, Who . . . art merci- 
ful to all those whom Thou foreknowest shall be 
Thine by faith and good works." 

Time presses. The kingdom of God is at 
hand. Salvation and predestination — future 
happiness is within the radius of our power to 
achieve. 

The condition is simple and clear. Follow 
the leading of God's beneficent grace through 
straight or winding ways. Walk ever in Christ's 
hallowed footsteps over moorland and lea, receiv- 
ing with sweet submissiveness the pains and 
anguish cast upon Israel's path, to prove her 
worthiness by humble and patient endurance of 
the test to enter the Promised Land. 

Not every idler, dreamer, or sayer, shall ac- 
complish the destiny — not every man who says, 
Lord ! Lord ! The land that flows with milk and 
honey is reserved for the worker who trudges 
over the hard road that lies between his exile and 
his home — nay, not every man who 'says,' but 
he that ' doeth ' the will of My Heavenly Father. 

The kingdom of heaven depends upon your 
good works ; yet ye stand idle all the day, and 



218 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

silently but surely evening draweth on and the 
solemn darkness of the night begins to unfold 
itself, to drape the judgment seat of Christ, before 
Whose solemn face the living and the dead shall 
stand to learn their destiny or doom. 

Time was given you by God to weave you a 
crown out of the golden threads of the passing 
hours. Each moment lost shall tell forever in 
the diminished beauty of that crown. " If thou 
shalt not watch, I will come to thee as a thief. 
Behold I come quickly; hold fast that which 
thou hast, that no man take thy crown." We of 
the faith are special heirs from our birth to a 
kingdom. While life endures the crown is yet 
only in our hands and we may lose it. When we 
shall have come into our kingdom Christ shall 
place it on our brows. Now, in life 'tis but fair we 
show our fitness for it. With each good work 
we do so, and tighten our grasp upon the crown, 
* that no man take it.' Not in idle dreams, nor in 
vain confessions of the lips, nor in the gilded 
resolves of pious enthusiasm — this is only the 
reed ; but, in the rich fruits of action, and the real 
works of virtue, shall we demonstrate this fitness. 

These shall be our witnesses, these shall speak 
for us when our tongues are silent in the tomb. 
Our toil, our labors, our solicitude will water the 
parched land of human nature with the sweat of 
our brows ; and with the violence that the king- 
dom of heaven must suffer, we'll wrest from 
the grudging soil the harvest of honest and indus- 
trious piety that is the price of our salvation. 



PERSONAL PASSIVENESS IN RELIGION. 219 

God's mercies are beyond our understanding. 
No sinner should ever lose hope, and yet, neither 
should men take such an awful risk and gamble 
with justice in their plan of living; such men 
play a desperate game ; for, at least, they are as 
liable to lose as win, where the virtuous and 
constant are always morally certain of winning 
the crown, and have only a gentle fear of losing 
the prize. 

Sovereign in art, the Church drapes her pillars 
and altars for the obsequies of her dead. It is 
not art in those of other faiths to do so — who 
have no fears. The Church's mourning colors 
and the sombre, and, while not melancholy, still 
sad numbers of her Dies Irae and De Profundis 
tell the living in accents of pain and grief, that 
'no man knoweth whether he be worthy of hatred 
or love.' Fears remain. When the Spirit has 
informed her of a saint's glory, she casts aside 
her mourning and puts on the white of the wed- 
ding garments. Let us then fear God's judgment, 
and fear more our own inconstant and perverse 
hearts, believing with the prophet, that ' fear is 
the beginning of that wisdom' we are all created 
to possess, and which reaches its highest perfec- 
tion in the contemplation and fruition of God 
forever. 



220 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 



CHAPTER X. 

MANY ARE CALLED BUT FEW ARE CHOSEN. 

" Many are called but few are chosen " — how 
joyous, and sad ! how exhilarating and downcast- 
ing ! God is the author of the former adjective 
in either set, man is the maker of the latter; 
God's the hope, man's own the despair. You 
and I had our share in the meaning of the 
adjective 'few;' we have given it a lighter or a 
deeper shade of meaning by our life. If few are 
chosen, indeed, it is because the many have not 
chosen to be so. God calls, man chooses. God's 
will alone completed our vocation ; this measure 
is eternal as Himself. The union of God's and 
man's will is necessary to complete the final 
choice. God's desires ever have been, and are 
now, in behalf of the 'many;' few reciprocate 
His love in calling them. The prehistorian has 
recorded it: " He came to His own, and His own 
received Him not." St. Peter, in his second 
Epistle, Chap, i, verse 10, distinguishes the two 
things — vocation and election : " Wherefore, 
brethren, labor the more, that by good works you 
may make sure your vocation and election ." 

I take it the idea of eternity claims in your minds 
the full strength of its purport — what it means to 
be forever lost to God, — to be cast out into 
exterior darkness, constrained to gnash your 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 221 

teeth in increasing wrath and repining, and to 
burn, without hope of respite, behind the ponder- 
ous gates of hell, bolted and sealed by the hand 
of God. Forever my Lord ? Aye, the clock of 
hell, if there be one, is wound up by the hand of 
God, and is destined to run as long as justice lasts, 
and — "His justice endureth forever and ever." 
In his lonely vigil, the sick man in his restless 
fever of the night turns his burning eyes to know 
the hour, and the measured strokes of the time- 
piece tell off the seconds that, though they seem 
as minutes, yet surely bring the dawn : Oh, for 
the glad day and the rubicund face of the morning 
sun, to supplant with his blushes the deathly 
pallor of the moon ! Oh, for the faces of friends 
and words of sympathy ! In hell it is eternal 
fever and eternal night; it has no morning — my 
God ! But there is no clock, no pendulum to 
swing and break the madding sameness, for there 
is no time — it is eternity. With this picture for 
a background let recollection throw upon the 
scene those terrible words : " No man knoweth 
whether he be worthy of hatred or love." Nay, 
you shall not on earth be ever absolutely certain 
of your eternity, — whether it shall be the vision 
of God's love, or the terrors of His justice, 
chanted in numbers of fire, with a minstrel for 
each flame, and each minstrel a lost creature. 
We tread with St. Anselm upon a narrow plank 
from shore to shore ; from time to eternity, over 
the dangerous chasm. Beneath our feet is the 
seething wrath of hell, and we walk blindfolded, 

N 



222 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

through the illusions of life and self-love, through 
the dense mists of human passions that overlie 
us, so that without a guiding hand from above 
we must lose our footing, stumble, fall, — and 
perish ! " Unless the Lord keep the city, they 
labor in vain that keep it." Above the clouds 
the ecstatic carols of saints absorbed in lasting 
thanks ; below us the frantic death-song of the 
doomed, and the despondent dirge of demons — 
the terrors of the infernal abode ; around us the 
world in all its glitter, the flesh and its allure- 
ments, the devil with his snares, earth's ambitions, 
fortunes and pleasures — all allies to Satan, sent 
abroad to secure victims, and armed with a 
terrible power to try our liberty, and sound our 
allegiance : whether we be for God or the devil ; 
Christ or Lucifer ! Is the dreadful eternity for 
me? you ask. The voice of the Church has 
sealed this uncertainty when she informs us that 
' no one is sure of his future salvation unless it 
be specially revealed to him from above.' 

Shall we debate the decrees of heaven? Shall 
we imitate Antiochus in a demon's pride that 
would make him a god? and shall we have to 
fall from the chariot of our conceit and be 
humbled, or drawn on to surer perdition by the 
clouds of our own unchecked dreams of self- 
esteem? Shall God use violence to force from 
us the confession of His divineness and our own 
humanness, as He wrung it from Antiochus, only 
when sharpest pains pierced his bowels, and an 
army of worms invaded his noisome flesh, when 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 223 

he was forced to exclaim : "It is just to be sub- 
ject to God, and that a mortal man should not 
equal himself to God" (Mach. xi, 9, 12); or, 
shall we in the obedience of Heli bow with rev- 
erent head before the immensities and secrets of 
God and humbly say: "It is the Lord, let Him 
do what is good in His sight." (1 Kings, iii, 18.) 
The sovereign reason, then, why our destiny is 
shrouded in obscurity, is that God so wills it : it 
is God's statute, and we may well exclaim with 
David : " All Thy statutes are truth " (Psalm 
cxviii), and what God decrees must be wise. 
We feel the sharp pain of the uncertainty. St. 
Paul felt this pain, accepted it and bore it at the 
very moment he confessed the mystery: "Who 
hath known the mind of God?" The uncer- 
tainty of salvation compels a sense of dread. 
Where other arrows have failed to accomplish 
the work, the thought of this uncertainty wages 
a war of extermination and utter effacement 
against our self-satisfactoriness — " In Thy truth 
Thou hast humbled me," says David. Pride, our 
darling idol, crumbles at the touch of this mys- 
tery, even as the false gods of Athens trembled 
and fell from their pedestals at the pressure of 
the Apostle's tread. And, withal, is it not the 
fairest blossom of our faith? Wheresoever we 
be, amid the world's gay scenes or amongst the 
dismal cells and gloomy corridors of monastery 
or convent ; in the lonely huts of the hermits far 
out in the deserts, this uncertainty goes with us 
and its presence pours forth the fragrance of 



224 AM 1 0F THE CHOSEN. 

humility upon our way; it breathes forth the 
odors of Jesus and true piety. It is a stern mon- 
itor set upon our pride. Men mount the heights 
of spiritual greatness — those dizzy heights! — 
and all but press their thin, mortified fingers 
upon the very gates of heaven, and still the voice 
of Paul, like a warning from the tomb, cries out : 
Beware ! beware ! only ' he that shall have per- 
severed to the end, the same shall be saved.' 
Till then, yes, till then 'no man knows' — fear 
yet and tremble; fear now; fear always: fear 
wisely, fear moderately — only fear. 

Humility is the first-born of this great uncer- 
tainty to the soul, and the fairest fruit of her 
womb. The Psalm cxviii of the prophet con- 
tains all the lessons of this dismal secrecy that 
veils from our mortal eyes the eternal years. 
David groaned, as we, for his destiny was in the 
balance like ours ; he knew not the weights and 
measures of heaven, and yet he, — king, prophet 
and saint, — in uncomplaining submission, bent 
forward his head to God's decree. The pangs 
of his royal soul we discern in his divine songs, 
but only as the expression of a grief and pain 
willingly and lovingly borne. These were not as 
the signs of his complaining displeasure, nor the 
token of any rebellion : " I know, O Lord, that 
Thy judgments are equity, and in Thy truth Thou 
hast humbled me" (Psalm cxviii, 75). As the 
foundation influences and gives character to the 
who4e structure, so must the first lesson of this 
mystery, humility, permeate every virtue of our 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 225 

life and constitute the very alphabet of Christian 
piety. We wonder at the altitudes of wisdom 
involved in this grim truth, but it behooves us to 
check our impertinent curiosity : " Lord, my 
heart is not exalted, nor my eyes lofty ; neither 
have I walked in great matters nor in wonderful 
things above me" (Psalm cxxx). "Thy knowl- 
edge is high and I cannot reach it" (Psalm 
cxxxviii). " Thy word is exceedingly refined " 
(Psalm cxxxviii). You are in earnest, who long 
to be saved. You do not conceal your anxiety 
over the dreadful uncertainty of your future elec- 
tion. You say with David : " My zeal hath made 
me pine away." Then is it time to avow your 
small wisdom and trivial wit ; to bow down and 
confess to the Lord your littleness, with the 
prophet: " I am very young and despised." Go 
on and confess thus again to God : " Thy justice 
is justice forever ; " and yet the uncertainty will 
abide with us, lingering after long struggles, 
invading the hoariest and most virtuous old age. 
Shadows everywhere! — the most sacred objects 
cast them : Even the altar has its shadows, sub- 
ject to this world. u Trouble and anguish have 
found me " — here in my old age, here in my 
cloister, here in the temple of God, yet, I adore 
Thee in all Thy decrees : " Thy testimonies are 
justice forever." 'Tis the great affair of life, the 
one concern, the one thing necessary — salvation; 
yet it is buried in the gloomiest, darkest depths 
of the eternal counsels. " It is the business that 
walketh about in the dark," as the prophet pro- 



226 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

claimed it. " He will overshadow thee with His 
shoulders." "Thou shalt not be afraid of the 
terror of the night." Yes, the uncertainty of sal- 
vation is the terror of the night. In what human 
attitude think you the great St. Paul shows the 
most admirable and impressive? Was it as the 
penitent in the desert? Was it as the Christian 
scholar at Ephesus? Was it as the captive in 
the Marmatime prison? Was it as the thrilling 
preacher before the Areopagus, the Christian 
sage among the great schools of Athens? Was 
it as the saint drawn up to the third heaven? 
Was it at Trefontane where his head fell under 
the blade ? Who knows what strange things men 
will do or what they will not endure in the secret 
hope of becoming some kind of divinity. If 
Paul was greater, he was never more truly great 
than in that scene where he stands as a man in 
the midst of God's mysterious judgments, whose 
lofty towers rear themselves above his human 
understanding, lost to his vision in the very clouds 
of heaven, and, falling down, humbly adores God's 
hidden immensity and secrets : " O heights of 
the riches, of the wisdom and knowledge of God, 
how incomprehensible are Thy judgments, and 
unsearchable Thy ways ! " He is supremely con- 
tented that ' the Lord knoweth who are His ' 
(2 Tim.). Why will man weary his mind and 
harm his soul by supposing he were to know his 
lot? It is less than fruitless and hopeless specu- 
lation. The supreme fact stands out before us 
always : We cannot vault it, we cannot get under 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 227 

it, we cannot go round it. God wills our lot to 
remain a mystery to us. 

Gratitude as a virtue has never prevailed with 
mankind or made any enviable record, and it may 
be questioned if pure gratitude to God for their 
prospective eternal happiness would act upon the 
elect as a check upon their evil tendencies, and a 
quietus upon sin, as effectually as the fear which 
now hangs over every man and haunts and tracks 
him everywhere — the fear lest he perish. The 
uncertainty of salvation is lawfully ordained to 
give birth to fear. Was it not to obtain the grace 
for us so to do that Christ feared in the Garden 
the awful judgments of His Father, which He was 
about to assume in all their rigors? Fear is an 
essential part of the Christian life. Paul, Augus- 
tine, Dominic, Francis and Ignatius, feared to 
the end. The fear upon the Master at Olivet 
chides our presumption, and as a branch of the 
old tree of death, man's pride must be lopped 
off. False confidence builds upon one's own 
worthiness, and never reckons upon the possibility 
of one's unworthiness. — "Work out your salvation 
with fear and trembling," was St. Paul's advice to 
the Philippians. It is his advice to us. He yet 
further warns the Corinthians against the perils of 
presumption and over-assurance : "Wherefore, let 
him that thinketh himself to stand, take heed lest 
he fall." (1 Corinthians, 10, 12.) The cold 
passivity of those outside the pale of our holy 
faith chills us to the marrow with its irreverent 
boldness : but it sounds more poetical than true 



228 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

to preach and believe that we must rest in the 
immense love of God without the smallest frag- 
ment of fear to vex our spiritual repose, or to 
mar the rhythm of our life. Verily, such slumber 
as this forgets the 'watch and pray' of the Master. 
Such faiths as these are of men, not of God. This 
is the poetry of earthy loves and human sentimen- 
talism — religion as men would have it. Fear, true 
and real, faith demands. Tis our duty to confess 
that God is good, sweet, and but too forgiving 
toward us wretches, but God has other attributes 
that exact our homage and compel our respect : 
"See therefore the goodness and seventy of God," 
is St. Paul's counsel. It may explain the absence 
of grosser indulgences from some lives of pre- 
sumptuous sectaries who languish in God's soft, 
tender and poetical love, like Oriental monarchs 
in their scented bowers, heedless of the lurking 
serpent, to observe that we see the drunkard's 
follies ; we observe the ungoverned youth con- 
sorting with harlots ; we hear the explosions of 
anger and ill-temper; but, only God sees the 
pride within men's bosoms. His sharpest sword 
is for such, and He is a long time whetting it, 
that it may the better do its work, when the hour 
comes for retribution. We may not have any of 
these other vices, but have we no presumption? 

St. Paul fascinated Athens with his eloquence. 
God favored him in most singular ways; and, 
notwithstanding all, the Apostle was harassed 
with fears for his eternal future. With the meek- 
ness of the lowest, with the sweetness of the 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 229 

very child, he begged the prayers of the faithful 
in his own behalf, lest, as he owned to them, 
* whilst he preached to others he himself might 
become a castaway' — " He will do the will of 
them that fear Him" — and " The Lord taketh 
pleasure in them that fear Him." Trace to its 
source the current of fear and you will find it in 
the spring of an humble heart, one that knows 
and realizes the vastness and the justice of God, 
and droops under its own sense and weight of 
unworthiness to ever stand in the presence of the 
Most High God. — "What is man, that Thou art 
mindful of him?" The basis — hidden in the 
ground — of the false confidence of heretics is not 
love for God, but an extravagant love of them- 
selves. " I have learned how to fear, after the 
example of St. Paul, who in fear cried out: 'O 
heights of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge 
of God,' " says St. Augustine. St. Prosper writes 
as follows : " The affair of our fore-election is 
hidden away from us so that a healthy fear may 
aid us in being always humble, and watching out 
lest we tumble down." Thus we always feel the 
presence of an humble self-disesteem that exhales 
from their lives and ever marks the saints, whilst 
a shocking self-sufficiency brands the heretical 
beliefs as the myths of self-loving men. On the 
eve of the Redemption the corruption of men was 
at flood tide. Lamenting over the world, the 
prophet says : " There is no fear of God before 
their eyes." How is it that men who have not 
the true faith can ever look unmoved out upon the 



230 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

terrible and uncertain futurity? Methinks they 
are certain they must be saved. They have not 
the fears of St. Paul or of St. Augustine, and the 
vast army of God's dear saints. Perhaps they 
allege and fancy they have not sinned. Only God 
knows our sins ; but St. John says we have all 
sinned in many ways. The world must have 
changed since Christ called out unto the men who 
fancied themselves as being without sin, to stand 
forth and apart — "Let him that is without sin cast 
the first stone." 

When the book of our life is opened, and one 
by one the pages are turned back and the record 
of each instant and each thought is submitted to 
the searching light and piercing scrutiny of God's 
luminous face and sovereign knowledge, who 
can say, who dares to say, what it at least may 
reveal, of his voluntary wrong, now unknown to 
himself or forgotten? Nay, the very absence of 
fear and the very over-confidence in your own 
integrity ; this unsuspecting worthiness, condemns 
you before the judges of Israel, the Apostles and 
saints of God. If you were to be your own 
judges, and the judgments fashioned to human 
standards, and left to biassed tribunals, the issue 
might be more or less safely forestalled. But, 
God shall be our judge. Heretics, however, will 
not fear, though the motto, " No one is a judge 
in his own case," is accepted by them in human 
things. What is the philosophy of this motto? 
It is simply that men are biassed, perverse and 
one-sided in that which concerns themselves* 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 23 1 

when their own interests are at stake. May this 
not be so in their religious life, that is left to 
their own judgments? The worst corruption of 
men's lives, and especially their pride and conceit, 
are to-day spread over with a white covering of 
snow ; but the snow will melt as they draw nigh 
the eternal Sun of Justice. Are you sure the 
spring will not uncover some hidden corruption 
in you after the summer of your lives shall have 
passed? O, heretics] Why did the saints of 
God dread the uncertainty of salvation ? Surely 
they did not lack love of God, nor love Him less 
for fearing Him. Verily, if true love were to be 
without fear they would have banished fear forth- 
with. No, they realized God's justice. They 
knew salvation lay in their own frail hands. 
They distrusted their wicked nature. They 
were always subject to temptation, and free to 
stand or fall ; they felt the dangers of life, and 
the inclination to pride inherent that sustains the 
uncertainty of the saints in the matter — the grave 
matter of salvation: in one word, they feared 
themselves — their own shortcomings and perverse- 
ness more than God's judgment. Their fear 
sprung from the root of an humble heart, for the 
judgments of God would square exactly with 
their own lives. The treasure of a man's salva- 
tion is kept in a treasure-house of clay, say, 
with St. Paul, rather in ' weak vessels ' of 
glass, easily broken. St. Paul has bequeathed a 
warning to false religions that admit no fear, 
beyond a mere formality: " Not he that com- 



232 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

mendeth himself is approved, but he whom God 
approveth." What again is the error of these 
self-satisfied sectaries who walk up to judgment 
with sang-froid, a bold, unerring step, as the 
Pharisee, in the full empty bloom of a conscious- 
ness of, and confidence in, an undefiled life. 
Their error is that they repute themselves as 
unlike ' the rest of men, sinners.' If this dead- 
ness of conceit lies on us, falsely termed Christian 
repose, if we are apathetic and incredulous 
toward the terrors of salvation, and cold in our 
hearts whilst we study the scene which Christ 
draws up of that dreadful day of anger in St. 
Matthew, our humble duty is to cry out to God, with 
holy passion and tears : " Pierce Thou my flesh 
with Thy fear, for I am afraid of Thy judgment." 
Humbled, then, by the sense of heaven's just 
terrors, and our soul oppressed with awe and 
plunged in a sea of tribulation, we might well not 
stop, but sink forever in despair ; but, we know 
Our Saviour has leaped from on high into the 
foaming waves of our own grief — "And the 
Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." 
And leaped — considering the number of Masses 
offered up since the day the High Priest himself 
first offered — into a sea of His Own blood, to 
save us. " If it had not been that the Lord was 
with us, let Israel now say — perhaps the waters 
had swallowed us up." (Psalm cxxiii.) We do 
not so despair then, for our sublime faith imposes 
on us the practice of hope and the mystery of our 
future life is designed in God's plan to serve us 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 233; 

up with the means of building for ourselves a 
hope that will be unto our souls a veritable tower 
of strength, a house of gold, and a gate of 
heaven. Our keenest anguish, our sharpest 
griefs must not pass beyond the boundaries of 
hope. Whilst we dwell on our own weakness, 
our miseries and sins, we must betimes turn our 
eyes upon the face of the dead Christ. We quiver 
with the awful trust of human liberty in the in- 
constancy of our souls, and still we must have 
confidence in God — this is our duty — Who in His 
mercy tends to save us ; Whose grace is never 
wanting to us in any of our needs. God asks of 
us the test of this confidence — He longs to have 
it. He finds pleasure and glory in its manifesta- 
tion. He never tires of hearing us say, Lord, I 
trust Thee ! When Peter stepped out upon the 
waters from his bark he must have been sub- 
merged by the billows ; but, how sublime was the 
confidence in Him the Apostle here shows to 
Jesus. This same childlike trust must adorn our 
virtues — a trust by which we throw ourselves out 
into the deep of this world, with its strong 
currents of passion, — where human nature is 
unable to survive long, and the soul must perish, 
and trust lovingly and ever in Our Lord to save 
us. We must neither presume nor despair. Our 
humility may have full liberty within the bounds 
of hope. Co-operation implies fully that God is 
with us — " If, therefore, I must co-operate with 
God I must have trust in God and distrust of 
myself, and always fear lest I might, through my 



234 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

own weakness perish, whilst God's mercy is for 
saving me," is the utterance of St. Chrysostom. 
" Intemperate fears," he says, " and immoderate 
anxieties should be set aside as reprehensible. 
Such disposition denotes a lack of trust in God. 
This does harm, whereas, the legitimate fear, born 
of the uncertainty of salvation, is intended by 
God for our good." He loved us first, and we 
should trust God above ourselves. " Unless the 
Lord build the house, they labor in vain that 
build it." His love for us is invariably true, 
whilst man himself is, and always has been, a 
traitor to his own soul. God is uniformly love 
and fidelity to him. Our saints have all heartily 
discountenanced distrustful solicitudes : " This 
fear," says St. Chrysostom, " should by no means 
find subsistence in useless terrors and anxieties ; 
it should be the beginning of wisdom that consists 
in this ; namely, that we may be able to enjoy the 
moral assurance of our salvation." Here again I 
pause to observe that humility is the underpinning 
of Christian hope and confidence — the ancient 
fact, ever new, that man is weak, fickle, and, 
above all, measured in his abilities. The 
prophet's trust in God never wavered : his hopes 
never rose out of himself. At all times and in 
all events, "Thou art my strength," was David's 
prayer always. When he tended his flocks, 
when he rushed forth half naked as a youth to 
slay the giant, on the throne, on the field of 
battle, " Thou wilt bring me out of the snare, for 
Thou art my protector," was the prayer that 
guaranteed a prosperous issue to each and every 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 235 

event in his life — in his kingdom, but more 
than this, in his own heart. We are weak and 
always subject to temptation. David's hope is 
ours, but the corner-stone of that trust must 
be laid in deep humility: "Though my life 
be wasted in grief, my path in life laid out in 
tears, my years in sighs ; though hunger should 
overtake me and lay his bony fingers upon me, 
my strength be weakened in poverty ; though I 
am a reproach to all my enemies, and to many 
of my neighbors, though they that see me pass 
should take quick flight and I be forgotten as 
one dead from the heart, I have put my trust in 
Thee, O Lord," says David. In fever and in 
want, in sore temptations, in anguish, in appro- 
brium, in ingratitude, in contempt, through the 
long journey of Israel, by deserts of burning 
sands, through camps of fierce warriors, through 
persecutions, famines and wars, our eyes of hope 
shall be bent heavenward to catch the signs in 
the heavens, the pillar of cloud by day and of 
fire by night, with the faith of Moses and the 
confidence of the wise men who trusted the Star, 
and meekly surrendered to its mute guidance on 
to unknown lands. We will cling to our faith 
through all, with the prophet's hope that in the 
end the God of Israel, the Saviour of our souls, 
and the Father of our destinies, after having 
proven our trust in Him, will ' lead us into the 
right land.' " Who indeed can boast," says St. 
Bernard, "that he is among the number of the 
chosen ; that he is of those God had predestinated 



236 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

to glory : we know nothing for certain about it,, 
but we have hope, and our hope comforts us." 
Why should we foresee? Foresight is God's pre- 
rogative, more especially where it touches upon 
free acts : we can enjoy a moral foresight, not 
truly infallible, but yet soothing and sufficiently 
sure : If we are determined upon doing our 
Christian duty in all things and at all times, and 
to overcome all temptations : we thus morally 
foresee that we do nothing to prevent our election 
to glory: " Strive by good works to make your 
vocation and election certain," says the Apostle. 
Why should God disclose to the doomed their 
piteous lot? The knowledge belongs to God. 
Besides seeming to discolor their freedom, such 
a sad announcement would only rob them of their 
hope. When the Grecian slave was on the point 
of being put to death for having spread the false 
report of a victory, he saved his life by exclaim- 
ing: "Am I to be blamed, O Athenians, who have 
given you one happy day?" As yet the living 
had not merited it: it is full time, alas, when 
their crimes have been done, their malice com- 
puted, for the awful judgment and sentence : 
"Depart from Me ye cursed into everlasting fire." 
If indeed we are to be saved, as mariners say, we 
should head our vessels on to the port we seek. 
We may have to beat the wind, tack, luff, or at 
times lay-to, but only as a means at all times of 
the more securely reaching our destiny. To us 
Catholics the word of St. Paul bears a very par- 
ticular reference : that if the natural branches 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 23^ 

have been cast off, we ought to fear; for, the 
sons of Abraham are, as it were, tlie natural sons 
of God, and we but the grafted branches and. 
adopted children. Shall the Father endure more 
from the latter than the former? Our fears 
should still further develop out of the fact that 
we cannot merit final perseverance. This is a 
gift of God. According to the Sacred Scriptures 
and the Fathers of the Church, our final perse- 
verance is a matter of uncertainty as long as we 
dwell in this vale of tears. Our vessels are frail, 
and life's sea surges and foams — angrily at times. 
There are storms far out on the deep, there are 
still greater perils near the shore. There is 
always danger for any man of losing his soul, 
through want of prudence or lack of care. His- 
tory tells us, and especially the pathetic, unwritten 
history of our own observation, that more than a 
few have fought and won battles on the plains of 
youth and manhood, who yet fell away and were 
conquered at last, leaving sad fears after them 
as an inheritance to their friends. The name of 
Judas Iscariot, prince-elect of Christ's kingdom 
— a name once honored, is but a specimen of 
one station and of one man. A mortal sin — a 
thought, an unholy wish, and God may justly 
strike down the bold intruder upon the domain 
of His sanctity, falling upon the victim then and 
there in the heat of his unholy lust, injustice or 
pride. The dispositions of those worldly Chris- 
tians who can slumber with this possible fate 
hovering over their pillows are an enigma to the 
o 



238 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

serious. The fear of God seems to have been 
erased from the tablet of their hearts. God's 
mercies are beyond number. No saint can ever 
measure their extent. No man ought ever to lose 
hope in them. But the abuse of His graces is 
treasured up, and no man can reckon how soon 
or how late, or if ever the fury of God's wrath 
will break forth with corresponding measure in 
the catastrophe of an unexpected and unprepared 
— for death. "Behold," says St. Augustine, "how 
foul of the truth they are, who deny that it is a 
gift from God to persevere to the last, when we 
perceive that it rests in God's hands to put an 
end upon our earthly existence according to His 
own good pleasure, when if He sends death to 
anyone before an impending fall He grants such 
a one perseverance to the end." St. Thomas 
likewise says : " We do not disavow the special 
protection of God, whereby He preserves the just 
from temptation, dangers, seductions, and occa- 
sions of sin — from which, for the most part, our 
active perseverance depends, — is often a per- 
ceptibly wonderful thing, which is not common 
to all the just. Let the just earnestly seek after 
it, ask it, and by their prayers merit it." If we 
endeavor to lead an unblemished life, one in 
harmony with Christianity, we cannot do so for 
a long space without special grace from the Lord. 
Men will count on the singular event of God's 
coming in on them at their deathbed, when they 
shall have spent their lives in riotous living and 
practical irreligion, and laying upon their death- 



MANY CALLED, FEW CHOSEN. 239 

bed the glories and the crown it has taken others 
a lifetime to weave. A man who had lived a 
century in untarnished purity of soul, in unwav- 
ering piety and strictest fidelity to grace, may, 
to be sure, in the twinkling of an eye — say, 
through grievous self-complacency and a shock- 
ing presumption — forfeit grace, die that very 
instant and be lost. And, on the other hand, the 
most hardened criminal, the product of a long 
lifetime of sin, may feel the touch of mercy just 
upon the point of expiring, fear God, and con- 
fess, and even die in the full bloom of love, by 
an act of perfect contrition, and seize the crown 
after one foot had been in hell. Though the 
proportion of our fear need be no more than as 
the quantity of salt to that of the food over 
which it is sprinkled to give it flavor, the piety 
of all must be seasoned by a wise fear to the 
very end, lest we be lost. Now, as before, St. 
Paul's fervid warning, too, will be to our mind 
and heart a divine law of perseverance — ''Work 
out your salvation with fear and trembling." 



24O AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 

"And a certain man said to Him, Lord, are 
they few that are saved, but He said to them, 
Strive to enter by the narrow gate, for many I say 
to you shall seek to enter and shall not be able." 
(Luke xiii, 23, 24.) Many shall desire to be 
saved ; but, for want of taking sufficient pains, 
and of being thoroughly in earnest, shall not 
attain to it (Note in Douay.) — "For many are 
called, but few are chosen." (Mat. xx, 16.) It 
depends upon the measure of one's authority, of 
which one must demonstrate a just claim for the 
exercise, whether he may as an author employ the 
authoritative and arbitrary expression — "I say to 
you." It carries with it a striking emphasis ; it 
reveals the red color of the wax, — the stamp of 
the crown, the august weight and dignity of the 
king's seal, which commands swift, indiscrimin- 
ating obedience — in the name of the king ! You 
do not perceive it, but 'I say to you' it is so. It 
does seem as if the Master would thus intimate 
that He foresaw the controversies that must find 
birth in the gloomy mystery of man's final election, 
the collision of our human judgments with the 
1 incomprehensible judgments ' of the Divinity. 
Does not the Divine oracle seem to forewarn us 
against an unbalanced conception of His attributes, 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 24 1 

one that might underrate the conditions of salva- 
tion, turn God's just terrors into a sham, rob the 
Christian life of its seriousness and unclothe the 
love of God of its dignity? Draw a dark imper- 
vious veil over the sanctuary of justice, and lo, 
that fatal slumber upon souls, the dangerous and 
impudent temerity of proud mortals, the arrogant 
assurances, the false hopes of self-love. What 
then? "Watch ye therefore for you know not 
when the Lord of the house cometh: at even 
or at midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the 
morning. Lest coming on a sudden, He find you 
sleeping. And what I say to you I say to all: 
Watch." (Luke xiii, 35, 6, 7.) "For all you are 
the children of light and children of the day : we 
are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore 
let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and 
be sober." (istThes. v, 6.) The Master was put 
the fierce query : "Are they few that are saved?" 
It has been asked in every age of pensive church- 
men ; we ask it to-day. The oracle that could 
speak and tell us is silent. The ground is quaggy 
and we cannot set an untremulous foot upon the 
rock of Peter with the full weight of complete 
conviction until we have reached it. 

The question is a solemn and mighty one — that 
calls for the saint and the sage at once to speak, 
for, two perils stand and frown on either side of 
the respondent. 'The narrow gate' has its Scylla 
and Charybdis, the danger of injudiciously soft- 
ening the rigors of religion and the judgments of 
a just God, thus inducing the peril of false ease 



242 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

for multitudes of immortal souls ; and on the other 
hand the equal danger of draping the sweet 
countenance of God with an undue severity that 
would blight in myriad bosoms the tender blossom 
of a hope that must otherwise bloom forever in 
Paradise. Though the Church is dumb, the words 
of Jesus echo mournfully in our ears with their 
terrible force and dreadful uncertainty unchanged 
by time. Wise Providence has so willed it. The 
silence of the Church on the number of the chosen 
indulges us with the blessings of broad hope, 
whilst it does not allow us to rid ourselves of the 
requisite salutary though painful fears. We can- 
not listen to the Master's words "Many are called, 
but few are chosen," nor give ear to those others 
that were uttered in a reply to a direct, pointed 
question : "Many shall seek to enter and shall not 
be able," and then pass on unaffected by them. 
They echo in our ears, they haunt us like a strange 
melody in a minor chord, — they impress us. Our 
hearts are not fully at rest. They furnish no food 
for the subsistence of despair ; yet presumption 
cannot thrive upon them. This is God's wise 
economy, for He came to save the world, and must 
save the two classes, the timid and the presumptu- 
ous. The Lord's words are as clear to us as they 
were to those whom He addressed in person. 
What impression did they make on the Jews? The 
same impression that they make on us. They 
awakened commingled hope and dread. 

Gener, a Spaniard of large erudition and of 
accepted ability plunges into comparison of the 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 243 

number of the predestinated with that of the lost 
souls. He is a fair sample of the pulse of modern 
schoolmen on the subject of this comparison. 
He says : "Out of the mass of all the faithful 
adults that have dwelt in the bosom of the Church, 
from the beginning, there are far more saved 
than lost." The basis of this view is thus set 
forth: "Because the faithful are the chosen peo- 
ple of God, and so the numberless pledges in 
which the goodness of God is shown to be for 
' saving all,' for having ' all come unto Him,' and 
( none to perish,' should have a special applica- 
tion to the faithful." He adds that these are the 
' vessels of mercy ' upon which God ' shows the 
riches of His glory' (Romans ix, 23), and from 
this number the choirs of saints are made up : 
"After this I saw a great multitude which no 
man could number, of all nations and tribes, and 
peoples and tongues, standing before the throne 
and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white 
robes and palms in their hands." (Apoc. vii, 9.) 
Gener, however, comes nearer to comforting us 
when he sees the comparative number of the 
final classes shadowed forth in the parable of 
the king's marriage-feast, where only ' one was 
found among the guests who had not the wedding 
garments.' Out of the mass of all mankind the 
number of the predestinated is much larger than 
has been commonly opined. In any case the 
number of the saved is not less than the number 
of the lost. Of those who are not ranked as 
faithful, there are not so many lost as is generally 



244 AM I 0F THE CHOSEN. 

supposed, because the Church has countless hosts 
of unknown children of whom she will one day 
say : " Who hath begotten these, and where were 
they?" (Isaias xlix, 21.) 

Some conclude from the parable of the ' five 
virgins' that as many shall be saved as lost. The 
foundation of this last conjecture, namely, one 
favoring the coequalness of the two kingdoms, 
that of the Lord and that of Satan, is established 
on the idea of the impropriety of Satan being 
able to boast a wider range of sovereignty than 
Jesus. Would it not be a reflection on the 
majesty and clemency of heaven if Satan should 
command larger hosts than the Prince of the 
Most High? they ask. It is our heartfelt, fervid 
supplication that Christ's kingdom shall flourish ; 
our blushes would become red furnaces of hot 
shame if we were to see the prince of darkness 
brandish his sceptre in Christ's face and mock 
the Eternal King, as the Jews, when they bruised 
His fair temples with a crown of thorns, and 
courtesied before Him in mock reverence. Fancy 
the wild shrieks of the blasphemer: " If Thou 
be the Son of God, save us : " But, "Jerusalem ! 
Jerusalem ! . . . thou wouldst not." Yes, man 
is free, and God will not take, though we all per- 
ish, our liberty from us. Must God save us? 
Shall God take it out of our hands by suppressing 
our freedom? Shame is man's, not God's, and 
no shame can ever touch God. All things glorify 
Him, and hell itself adds its note of just but 
unwilling praise. 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 245 

The conjecture, I avow, apart from its mental 
strength and the vigor of its logic, bears honora- 
ble and pious evidence of a heart that loves the 
Master's kingdom ; is devoured with a soldierly 
zeal to spread the Lord's empire. With all our 
faults our hearts are ever with the Master ; and 
still like Peter, we can and will sin, even whilst 
that awful echo haunts our memory and will not 
die away : O were it another's word we might 
not take it so much to heart ; but it is His, and, in 
its mildest whisper, though softly and not loudly 
spoken, it breeds a cold terror, that no human 
conjecture can dispel — " Few are chosen." 

But stay ! The view of Suarez on the num- 
ber of the chosen inspires the moderns with cheer. 
He is the guardian angel of the mildzsts, in their 
broad and most hopeful opinions touching on 
the predominating number of the predestinate 
even among the grown faithful. True, any opin- 
ion offered by such an illustrious theologian de- 
serves respect. He says: "If by Christians we 
understand those only who die in the Catholic 
Church, it seems to me more likely, under the 
law of Grace, that the greater number of these 
are saved. The reason is because, first of all, 
of those who die before they are grown up, the 
great multitude die baptized; and the adults, 
though the greater number of men often sin 
mortally, get up again after falling, and thus pass 
their lives, rising and falling. Then again, there 
are but few who are not prepared for death by 
the sacraments, and do not grieve over their 



246 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

sins, at least by attrition ; and this is enough to 
justify them at that time ; and after their justifi- 
cation the time left them is so short that they 
can easily persevere, and do so, without any fresh 
mortal sin. Therefore, all things taken into 
account, it is probable that the majority of Chris- 
tians in this stricter sense are saved." The mild 
tell us that the grain is always more abundant 
than the cockle; that the good fishes invariably 
outnumber the bad. They further assert that in 
the parable of the talents, two were rewarded 
and but one punished. 

Do you droop under the weight of too heavy 
fears, and it chances these parables furnish you 
with the staff to aid your journey, accept the 
proffered aid, and may your burden be lighter 
for the new strength you feel. Of course, the 
staff may break — these views are not infallible : 
lean on them, but do not impose all your weight 
on them. You might lose all fear and fall, and 
die on your broken staff. Our Mother, the 
Church, has not spoken on the number of the 
chosen. Do you welcome the gentle Suarez to 
your homes to brighten your hearts with his 
benignant, hopeful, radiant face? Suarez pre- 
sumes reasonably that all who approach the sac- 
raments, eat and drink the Saviour's Flesh and 
Blood worthily. On this presumption, as most 
Catholic adults die with the sacraments, they all, 
generally speaking, should be saved. 

But may I ask if the Blessed Leonard of Port 
Maurice is rash in stating that ' a great number 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 247 

of Christians are lost, because their confessions 
are null through want of true sorrow? ' When we 
consider that contrition calls for a sorrow for the 
past and a determination for the future, may we 
not fear that at least some men approach the altar 
perfunctorily, or by way of an external accom- 
plishment of an ecclesiastic precept at Easter, or 
by mere force of custom of ' making the mission,' 
or as a matter of natural fear? Is there not a 
danger lest the firm purpose of amendment be 
lacking in the character of a true sacramental 
resolve ? 

What an ominous sound it has — "Few are 
chosen." Jesus saw clearly the number of the 
elect. He saw they were few. They cannot be 
more nor less than He foresaw. Shift it about, 
look at it on all sides, we cannot change it ; it 
always meant, and now means, what Christ said : 
" Few are chosen." 

St. Chrysostom stood in the pulpit at Antioch. 
The multitude was vast and still in his great 
presence : he pauses ; his face grows prophetic 
with a strange message that lay written on the 
tablet of his heart. Who wrote the message? 
"What I am about to divulge will strike terror to 
your hearts," said the saint, " but I cannot 
refrain." He then spoke his terrible message : 
"Out of so many thousands that go to make up 
the vast city, that in importance and population 
is second to none, hardly one hundred will be 
saved." Antioch was a Christian city; religion 
was said to flourish ; the bulk of Christians lived 



248 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

commonly well, sacraments were patronized with 
normal fidelity, and the ordinary piety of Chris- 
tianity prevailed. Who wrote that message? If 
the great saint could not refrain from uttering 
such a woful, dismal document, must heaven 
have revealed it to him? We know not, neither 
do we know that this dreadful prophecy affects 
us. Perhaps, after this prophecy, the people of 
Antioch were saved because they heeded the 
warning like the Ninevites. Consider the oracle, 
Chrysostom ! a great doctor and saint praised 
before our tabernacle : " Our fathers were all 
under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 
and all, as Moses, were baptized in the cloud and 
in the sea, and they all ate the same spiritual 
food, and all drank the same spiritual drink : but 
with most of them God was not well pleased, for- 
they were overthrown in the desert. " Now, these 
things," adds St. Paul, "were done in a figure of 
us." The Israelites numbered upward of six 
hundred thousand, exclusive of the women and 
children, yet only Caleb and Joshua were chosen 
to enter the Promised Land, drink in the glories 
of hills and lakes, and taste its milk and honey. 
We all, as Christian men, must pass through a 
sea of tribulation and tears : how often like the 
thunder of the physical heavens, the rumbling of 
the groans and the sharp sounds of killing grief, 
bespeak the valley of tears in the human heart. 
We are all baptized, we eat the Bread of Life, shall 
I say that few of us reach the Promised Land ? 
Let Him speak Who has a right to speak. " For 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 249, 

many, I say to you, shall seek to enter and shall 
not be able." St. Peter draws a conclusion from 
the Deluge and the Ark, " in which a few, that 
is, eight souls, were saved by water." The world 
had existed for nearly two thousand years, and 
the human family had outgrown computation and 
had filled the earth. Noah and his family alone 
were saved, "whereunto baptism being of like 
form." The sacrament of baptism is equipped 
with power to save us, but not all who are baptized 
shall effectually be saved. We must co-operate 
with its grace, and persevere to the end, if we 
would wear the crown. In baptism, we, as it 
were, enter the lists ; we step upon the course; 
the goal is yonder and we must run to seize It. 
Why did St. Peter mention the fact that but eight 
souls had been saved out of that vast number? 
Because many are called, but few are chosen, and 
he thus stated the fact. In Genesis, the nine- 
teenth chapter records the sad fate that fell on 
Sodom and Gomorrha, when " brimstone and 
fire from the Lord out of heaven" fell in a sudden 
and deadly shower that consumed all their in- 
habitants, and put a quietus upon every living 
creature. No mortal grieved, not an insect 
moved, not a leaf stirred, when strangers and 
neighbors came to express their condolence. The 
ruin was complete. Lot and his family were the 
only dwellers of the doomed cities that eluded 
the fatal sulphur and consuming fires, by timely 
escape through heavenly intervention* and a 
divine warning of the impending doom. This is . 



250 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

a picture of eternal punishment. " As Sodom 
and Gomorrha and the neighboring cities, in 
like manner having given themselves over to 
fornication, and going after other flesh, were made 
an example, suffering the punishment of eternal 
fire." (St.Jude.) The shadows of these thrilling 
events shoot across Hope's path. They are like 
passing clouds, they modulate the dazzling light, 
but are not destined to overwhelm us with their 
gloom. No darkness should shut out the golden 
ray of an immortal hope ; only the dark hand of 
Satan would intercept that beam, and wrap the 
soul in the black darkness of despair. We read 
in St. John that out of the great crowds of sick, 
blind and lame, that lay in the porches of the 
Pond Probatica, awaiting the coming of the angel 
to stir up the waters, only one was healed. " He 
that went down first into the pond ; " again the 
strange minority; again that haunting dread. 
Only, only, never simply all. Isaias announces 
the prophetic judgment of the world : " and few 
men shall be left." How painfully, how strangely, 
the words of the prophet and the Saviour's own 
words match — " Few are chosen," said Jesus, 
" few men shall be left," said Isaias. At the 
crack of doom, when the " City of Vanity " is 
broken down; " every house is shut up." "It 
shall be thus, in the midst of earth, in the midst 
of the people, as of a few olives that remain 
should be shaken off the olive tree, or grapes, 
when the vintage is ended." (Isaias xxiv.) 
When the harps of sinners shall be hung up for- 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 25 1 

ever, the timbrels of the doomed shall resound 
no more, the merry drinking songs shall perish 
from the lips, and heavy sighs of regret and 
anguish shall supplant the merry lays. These, 
the few olives, the few grapes, that remain, the 
few virtuous and good ones, " shall lift up their 
voice and shall give praise." Such witnesses 
darken our cause, but if truth be on our side, if 
we have not deserved sad judgment by our 
voluntary evil life, peace be to us. These 
heavenly truths do annoy our human palate with 
their bitterness ; but they are meant by God, the 
world's Great Physician, as an antidote to our 
proud judgments, and a stimulant to our drowsy 
inactivity. Christ desired to rouse our indolent 
spirit, to make us active in the vineyard, gather- 
ing, not lounging, earning the wages of virtue — 
life, not ' the wages of sin ' — death. We are not 
surprised when we are informed that we must run 
to win the race, and ' strive for the mastery.' No 
dispute ever arises when we are taught that the 
price of the crown is the cross, yet, when the 
Master announced that * many are called, but few 
are chosen,' we quarrel with Him. We accepted 
the conditions of salvation, and Christ, Our Lord, 
now repeats the conditions of the compact, and 
simply warns us that we are not paying the price 
we agreed upon ; that we are not realizing the 
conditions of salvation. He says, ' you are not 
watching, you are not praying, you are not 
keeping the Commandments, you are not living 
a Christian life; bestir yourselves, then, or you 



252 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

will be lost.' Our Lord says many are not co- 
operating with the grace He so magnanimously 
vouchsafes them. He says few are living ac- 
cording to Christian standard — few are chosen. 
The Master states a future fact, as He sees it, but 
not as He made it. Our Lord says that the 
most of men are idlers in the vineyard, and He 
complains, and He warns them. The Judgment 
Day has not yet come. Christ's words are not 
our judgments. He knows His own standard, 
statutes and laws. He foresees what our judg- 
ments will inevitably be if we continue to live as 
perhaps you and I are living now. He raises 
the danger signals to notify the Christian manner 
to so ordain his life as to meet the terrors of 
justice. The rapid, treacherous currents go 
before the tempest, blowing the dust into our 
eyes, carrying off loose and light objects, banging 
our shutters, to notify us in time to meet the 
storm. He sees our danger, and comes to us as 
a friend, privately, and says, be careful, watch 
out. 

Instead of thanking His Divine goodness and 
worshipping more deeply His vast mercies, and 
taking His word, as it was intended, for a new 
evidence of His good-will and dearest friendship 
toward us, instead of heeding Him and taking 
the hint to mend our evil ways, w T e give Jesus the 
contrary of grateful thanks. We say, He is all 
too just, too cruel. Alas, the Jews misunderstood 
Him, misconstrued Him, and would not under- 
stand His love ; neither do we. Why, brethren, 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 253 

this I say is not our judgment, nor sentence ; this 
is not the requiem of our Christian life ; 'tis the 
voice of the Good Shepherd Who calls us from 
the pastures of guilt, 'tis the voice of Jesus. A 
large number will be saved. According to the 
common opinion of the Holy Fathers, God pre- 
destinated the race of mankind to fill the vacant 
places of the rebel angels. St. Augustine has 
written as follows : "God gathered from the race 
of mortals, lying rejected and under just condem- 
nation, a host of people by His grace, to fill up 
and restore the position lost by the angels." St. 
Anselm as well agrees that we may safely say, 
there will be people and generations of men on 
this earth until the number of angels is completed. 
Now what is the number of the angels? We can- 
not compute their number — " Is there any number- 
ing of His soldiers ?" asks Job. ' 'Count if you can 
the sands of the sea," echoes Bossuet. The 
common opinion, built up on the text of St. John 
in the Apocalypse, 'and the tail of the dragon drew 
down a third part of the stars of heaven,' is that 
one-third of the angels fell from grace. A large 
number of mankind are saved, but it is a question 
whether Our Lord decided that more will be lost 
than saved of the faithful. Fusing the saints and 
angels, we may say that there will be more in the 
eternal glory of heaven than will be cast into the 
everlasting shame of reprobation — "In the multi- 
tude of His people lieth the glory of the King, 
the ignominy of the prince in the scantiness of 
his nation." If we take in all mankind, pagans 



254 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

and heretics included, there is no temerity in stat- 
ing that by far the larger number will be lost. If 
we embrace Christians only, taking into account 
the children who have died with the character of 
baptism, we may say that more are saved than 
lost. If, lastly, we narrow ourselves down to 
Christian adults, we may safely take Christ's word, 
that more are lost than saved. This has always 
been the prevailing opinion. The faithful are by 
excellence "the called," and "few" of even these 
are eventually chosen to assume glory. We must 
not conclude from this word "few are chosen" that 
it was intended in God's design to minimize, or 
in any way decrease our legitimate hopes of eter- 
nal rest. The Master did not intend that any man 
should be so far affected by His prophecy as to 
renounce his piety or decrease his zeal. To take 
it for granted that he is for the doomed, would be 
a prostitution and vile abuse of the Lord's words, 
and a blasphemous frustration of God's plan, con- 
ceived in His Divine charity. We may justly and 
piously have fears of being found among the lost, 
but despair is contrary to all virtue. Humility is 
not despair, pious fear is not despondency. 
Despondency would only open a way to irreligion 
and to every excess of passion and disorder. The 
Master's word justly humbles us. Our hope lies 
in our own hope in Christ. When the light of 
hope is extinguished in the human breast, the long 
eternity of darkness has begun. Not to have hope 
enough is indeed a sin and a crime ; too much 
hope, that is hope without fear, is presumption. 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 255 

If one is to be saved, we all have equal rights 
to hope that each of us is that one, for God is 
not a respecter of persons. Christ intended in 
His mercy to excite us to be of the few that are 
chosen. Let the dead bury the dead. Our des- 
tiny lies with the few who shall live. You and 
I cannot doubt that God wills us to be found 
among the few. It is no paradox : Our business 
lies not with the many. Let others go their way. 
They, like ourselves, are free. Upon our task 
let us bestow our best energies, the highest and 
fullest powers at our command, and if necessary, 
our very life. Many saints and martyrs passed 
out from mortal life in their adolescence and 
youth. The inducements to live on in the world 
with the many — riches, honors and pleasures, 
lay at their feet, a long life with the many who 
tread the broad way, or a short existence with 
the few, who pace the narrow path. The longest 
earthly life is short when compared with infinite 
futurity — and all things pass away. Choose, 
then, with Sebastian and Cecilia, with Francis and 
Clare, with Ignatius and Theresa, ' the one thing 
necessary ' — eternal life. We cannot erase such 
words as St. Gregory's, " Many come to the faith, 
and few are ushered into the kingdom of heaven, 
for the most of men are faithful to God in word 
and abandon Him in their way of living. Two 
things should emerge from this fact : firstly, that 
no one should of himself be guilty of presump- 
tion, because, although you are called to the 
faith, you do not know whether you shall be 



256 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

elected to the kingdom of heaven; secondly, 
that we must not dare despair of our neighbor, 
whose life we see is given over to vice." We can- 
not cancel such authority, nor abate the fierceness 
of its testimony. If, indeed, we may sadly be- 
lieve that so great a number of the grown faith- 
ful, our own brethren, shall be consigned to the 
dismal dungeon of darkness and unspeakable 
horror forever, if indeed we do believe and fear 
not rashly that the grave shall separate us — by 
God's grace — forever from them, save for that 
one brief moment, when together we shall stand 
before the judgment-seat, not to speak, but to 
listen to the judgment delivered to the elect and 
the reproved, and when we shall have learned 
our blissful future, shall still in silence look, but 
not speak to the lost, the long, aye, the everlasting 
— what ? — farewell ? — good-bye ? — adieu ? But 
such a word spoken by tongue or eye, look or 
gesture, would be bitter irony, and so an untruth, 
that cannot dwell in the bosom of the children 
of eternal truth ; they must suffer eternal tor- 
ments. The elected ones cannot, must not, then 
wish it otherwise — " Thy will be done." Con 
summation est — it is all over with, mourned the 
feeble voice of Jesus on His deathbed. His 
sufferings were ended, His glory and joys begin- 
ning. Consummatum est! exclaims the unhappy 
chorus of silent faces of the doomed. The will 
of God decrees the sad eternity. The chosen 
souls, without a parting sign, withdraw to heaven, 
and leave the unfortunate multitude, among whom 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 257 

the faces of many they had loved on earth, and 
to whom the ties of kinship or religion had bound 
them, to their dark doom. If, I say, we may so 
be persuaded, let it not seem that we would deny 
the loving mercy of heaven, or that the character 
of God's conduct toward mankind, especially 
Christ's own beautiful, fervid words and adorable 
life, tells of aught but of mercy as the prevailing 
spirit of the Father and the Son in Their dealings 
with the world. The very lips that will pronounce 
the judgment are the same that called these 
doomed to repentance. Even as the judgment 
is delivered, the red wounds shall say how Jesus 
wished it otherwise. The hand that shall wave 
the lost to their bitter future shall be the blood- 
stained hand that was fastened to the cross, that 
these same doomed should be set free from their 
chains of sin. Let it not seem as though we inti- 
mated the impossibility of every man winning a 
crown ; nay, it fully consists with this stand that 
God calls us all, provides us all with heavenly 
grace in fertile abundance, which we are free to use 
and be saved, or abuse and be lost. If the many, 
or an equal portion, are lost, it is their own perverse 
wills and evil lives that brought them to their sad 
fate. God was only too eager to forgive their 
crimes, if they repented. The ignorance of many 
may prove their final bliss, but God can neither 
deceive nor be deceived, and He alone will decide 
the degree of culpable or involuntary ignorance. 
I confess, indeed, that we who dwell in a land 
where the strict canonical discipline has not yet 



258 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

reached its maturity, may be too quick in passing 
over the soft impression of Suarez. We dwell, 
alas, in heretical countries, where many sheep of 
Christ roam wild over the unfenced plains, un- 
known or unclaimed by the Shepherd. In Catholic 
countries the flocks are so divided that each priest 
knows his sheep: "I know Mine and Mine know 
Me." He can look to it, and must, as a dutiful 
priest, see that religious duties are faithfully per- 
formed by each and every one. He counts the 
faces of his flock at Easter time ; he sprinkles 
each with the Blood of the Lamb. As yet, we 
have not arrived at the highest development to 
which, under our divine and zealous episcopate, 
we hope to attain, when our financial means 
will allow. Each priest shall know each soul, 
like the shepherd knows each sheep in his fold, 
and the father knows his children, and can run 
after the lost ones and bring them back to the 
faith. This being presumably the case in Catho- 
lic countries, we might consider with more re- 
spect the doctrine of the profound and learned 
theologian and devout religious, the tenor of 
which is, that the large majority of adult Catho- 
lics shall be chosen. Nothing, I reiterate, has 
been definitely declared on the question of the 
comparative number of the elected souls. 

God's providence is in all, from the direction of 
the tiniest rill and the least movement of the 
sparrow, up to the care of nations, of the uni- 
verse, and the motherly providence of our souls' 
dearest, least and universal interests. In the 



THE NUMBER OF THE ELECT. 259 

division of opinions, the mercy of God renews 
the prodigy of the heaven-sent manna in the 
desert. It adapts itself to all our tastes, and fash- 
ions itself to all our peculiar needs : To the over- 
fearful ones, timid and shivering, with a deeper 
terror than is salutary — to you Christ says what 
He said to Peter, when the Apostle fell down 
under a crushing dread at the Master's feet, 
forced to the earth by the weight of his own sin- 
fulness, as expressed by his words, ' depart from 
me for I am a sinful man,' — to you, I say, Christ 
says : " Do not fear." The wants of the great 
multitude of idlers and slothful are appeased, 
and their hunger satiated by the manna, for the 
consent of ages sends out the fierce and piercing 
shriek : " Many are called, but few are chosen ; " 
to awaken them to the business of eternal salva- 
tion. For you, my brethren, who earnestly en- 
deavor to preserve God's grace in your hearts, 
or who, falling, contrite and humble, speedily 
rise, — to you the lightest fears and the weightiest 
hopes belong by every right. Be assiduously 
humble, you of the cloister ; and you brethren of 
the world, be not swollen up with your own con- 
ceits, and then you need not greatly fear but you 
shall enter by the narrow gate. That gate is low 
as well as narrow, and our spirits must bend, and 
our rigid, stiff-necked pride must yield to the task 
of entering in. When Saul pursued him, David 
cried out: " Why pursuest thou me? thou pur- 
suest a dead dog." — "God raiseth up the needy 
from the earth, and lifteth up the poor from the 



260 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

dunghill, that He may place them with the princes 
of His people." Ask for the crown of persever- 
ance. Why do you falter? What! you say you 
are too unworthy? If you are sincere, and are 
the least, you have the highest right to ask a 
saint's portion of the Master's kingdom. What is 
that you say? — "I will speak to my Lord, where- 
as I am dust and ashes." (Genesis xviii, 27.) 
And lo, the Voice: "Enter into the joy of thy 
Lord." Oh, all ye sainted ones, who have fought 
the good fight, and have entered already into 
coronal joys, forget not your exiled brethren of 
earth, still in the strife. Fairest of the fair, by 
grace our Mother, gentle advocate, shepherdess 
of Israel, be ever with us in life. Thy protection, 
thy love, thine intercession in our behalf before 
thy Divine Son, will soften the terrors of the 
night and the awful gloom of death — Fair Lady, 
ask it of the Master for mine and me, — aye, for 
all mankind, the grace to hear in judgment the 
happy words: "Come ye blessed of My Father, 
possess you the kingdom prepared for you from 
the foundation of the world." (Matth. xxv, 34.) 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 26 1 



CHAPTER XII. 

AM I OF THE CHOSEN? 

We have dwelt upon the comparative number 
-of the elect, — a weighty, interesting and import- 
ant theme ; but, our first charity is found at our 
own fireside ; so, we proceed on our journey 
homeward. We are delighted that many shall 
obtain final rest in God. Whoso they be, we 
extend our felicitations, cordial and deep, to the 
unknown elect. But we cannot pause here very 
long : we must hasten to our chief interest, a more 
intimate concern, the one bound up in the terrific 
question for each of us — a fair question, a direct 
one. We should not blink it. Grant, from the 
bad way you are living, your prescience of an 
unfavorable reply but too correct : Brethren, it is 
yet time, and we may alter our life so as to face 
the question with clear and solid hopes. Tre- 
mendous question! — Am I one of the chosen? 
Shall I find lasting peace with God? Shall I 
possess the kingdom prepared by the Father of us 
all for those who love Him ? What matters if we 
answer no to aught or even all else if we can but 
say yes to this question — "What doth it profit a 
man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of 
his own soul? " 

An infallible certitude, a perfect assurance, such 
as by the force of the fact abolishes all fears and 



262 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

allows no margin for confidence, is a false pros- 
pect. This is the defective vision of old age : it 
sees only afar — it sees the undoubted grandeurs 
of God and His mercies without number, and does 
not observe the doubtful genuineness of one's own 
disposition and the truthfulness of his co-opera- 
tion. The highest assurance we can attain to is a 
moral one. It is always more than possible that 
we shall be lost. It is never absolutely impossible 
for us to lose our souls. Examine your own 
heart, gather the fruits of your own observations 
of men, and say if it would not be a knowledge 
too perilous for any but the rarest souls if God 
should make known to them by special revela- 
tion their final election. A John the Baptist, — 
whose eminent sanctity rose above the crowd 
of saints, as the Cedar of Lebanon towers 
over its leafy brethren of the forest, but whose 
humility imparted to his soul the solidity of 
the massive oak — could have borne such knowl- 
edge and stood firm and unshaken in the 
consciousness of his own unworthiness, — for ' a 
greater than John was not born of woman.' We 
reverently set aside the Mother of the Lord — we 
shall not write of her, nor speak of her compara- 
tively. Jesus could tell His mother anything — 
the Mother of Humility : she is beyond the saints ; 
she is — Mary ! — "Because He hath regarded the 
humility of His handmaid for behold from hence- 
forth all generations shall call me blessed." Pride 
is ingrained in us ; its shadow is upon us all — the 
spot most like to be found on the robe of each 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 263 

saintship — that slight, almost imperceptible dis- 
coloration — say a shadow. We know of but one 
gown, of clear unsmirched brightness, without a 
shade — the Virgin's. We cannot be saved with- 
out the grace of perseverance, and this we cannot 
merit. No one will deny the graces poured out 
on Solomon. Judas Iscariot belonged to the 
state of Christian perfection. He was an Apostle 
of the Lord. 

Am I predestinated ? — " Who knoweth the Mind 
of the Lord" (Romans 13.) Shall I be saved? 
The word is pronounced for all time : "No one 
knoweth whether he be worthy of hatred or love." 
But I am the High Pontiff ; I am a priest ; I am a 
religious ; I am a king ; I am a rich man : I am a 
learned man. It does not matter. "What I say to 
you I to say to all" "Watch" — "JVo man knows." 
I ask myself whether I be of the chosen, and I 
must reply to myself that I do not know. This, 
my only true answer, disheartens at first, but the 
effect stops short of evil excess, being overtaken 
by the timely reflection, that after all it is God's 
will that it be so : It is Wisdom's design, to test 
me, and in this way discover if I be worthy of 
God's love and the high reward of heaven. He 
will not compel me to the nuptials of the Lamb, 
nor drag me by violence to my wedding with 
eternal glory. I choose God, my eternal Love, 
with an honorable and uncompulsory freedom. 
This sweet reflection and soothing recollection 
brings serene peace to me. Yes, it is God's will ; 
this is enough. And how vastly better His will 



264 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

to mine ! I know God loves me, and upon the 
altar of that sacred affection I lay down with a 
free and happy heart all my destinies. I shall 
not ever seek that absolute certainty which my 
God, my Sovereign, and my Love, does not wish 
me to know. It is for His interests and my own. 
I obey and content myself with the less infallible, 
but more pious and confident, moral assurance. 
This is not heaven. It would not be any longer 
earth if I were to know infallibly my future; 
moreover, earth is a probation. Our Lord laid 
down His life for me. He saw me clearly from 
the Cross as I stand before you ; He distinguished 
me from the crowd; He marked off each one of us 
from all the rest. His life was for me. His life 
was for each one of you. 

The cardinal fact of my predestination is a true 
and deep faith, full of admiration for, and hope 
in, Jesus Christ. When all the lights of the world 
about us are quenched, and we are left solitary, 
it is Good Friday in the soul : the pallid face of the 
dying Saviour should be visible to us — our One 
Love. That form should be the central fact in our 
life. Clear, sad and grand, the white face and limbs 
uncovered to disclose an unblemished whiteness, 
stand out, revealing the sacred form of Jesus, our 
beloved Master, whilst there is let down from the 
sky a drapery of inky darkness for a background, 
and over Him is spread a canopy of ethereal 
mourning, sustained by two white human pillars, 
representing Mercy and Justice — the penitent and 
the impenitent thieves. — Behold the dead Christ ! 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 265. 

He rests on the easel of the Cross, your Model. 
He died for all men. All men, then, are sculp- 
tors. 

Are you of the chosen? If so, you are 
charged with the noble but arduous task of re- 
producing in your lives the external features of 
your Master's, combined with the internal charac- 
ter of His beautiful life. The Crucifix is the 
epitome of the Saviour's life. Here we shall find 
all : " For whom He foresaw He also predestin- 
ated to be made conformable to the image of His 
Son," says St. Paul. Sublime task! but one that 
teems with difficulties : to produce in our life a 
resemblance to the character of Jesus Christ !— 
Yes, and out of the rough mass of human flesh, 
the block of human clay that has feelings, that 
declines stubbornly the chisel and resists through- 
out the intrusions of the hammer : "I see another 
law in My members fighting against the law of 
My mind." (Romans, 7-23.) 

" Hath not the potter power over the clay?" 
To become * vessels of mercy ' the laws of Jesus 
Christ must be at work in us and rule supremely 
over us. God's will must supplant our own — "O, 
man, who art thou that repliest against God ; 
shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, 
why hast Thou made me thus?" (Romans, 
ix, 20.) "For the end of the law is Christ." 
(Romans, x, 4.) The old laws of human flesh 
and perverse instincts must be repealed and swept 
away. Human passions must surrender to the 
Crucifix ; but, a sterile contemplation . will not 



266 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

answer — " Every one that striveth for the mastery 
refraineth himself from all things. I, therefore, 
so run, not as an uncertainty ; I so fight, not as 
one beating the air," says St. Paul. We are 
brought hither to do battle and overcome. We 
have an enemy — our own flesh ; and our sword 
should, and must pierce our flesh. Our bodies 
must feel the hostility and the stinging blows : " I 
chastise my body and bring it into subjection." 
(Corinthians, ix, 27.) Christ's death says death 
upon our bodies : " Knowing this, that our old 
man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin 
may be destroyed, and that we may serve sin no 
longer." (Romans, vi, 6.) 

Like the sweeping Deluge, that bore away all 
corruption from earth, the crimson avalanche of 
mercies descending from Calvary must carry 
away, by heroic violence, the corruption of sin 
from our lives. Flesh and blood will mutter and 
argue and groan, and finally resist — " For we 
know that every creature groaneth, and is in 
labor even till now." (Romans, viii, 22.) Passion 
dies hard, and argues every inch of the way ; but 
the laws of Jesus Christ have decreed death unto 
them. To the gibbet then with them, brethren ; 
to the gallows with your bodies — on to Calvary ! 
Let your senses be crucified, like your Adorable 
Model : " And if Christ be in you the body 
indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit 
liveth because of justification," says St. Paul. 

The first sign of our predestination is, then, 
our likeness to Jesus Christ in our bodily life — 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 267 

' 'For if you live according to the flesh you 
shall die, but if by the spirit you mortify the 
deeds of the flesh you shall live." (Romans, 
viii, 13.) 

What say those ashen faces, half stern, half 
tender, half rigid, half yielding, half alive, half 
dead, we so often see in God's elected children 
and saints, with the air of the grave about them, 
mingled with the serenity of a higher born peace 
than earth's, spread over their countenances — 
Christ-like faces that rebuke the consciences of 
men with a mere glance? They are God's saints 
— dead, as it were; they pass in and pass out 
amongst us — dead to the world, and alive only to 
God : " For we are buried together with Him by 
baptism unto death." (Romans, vi, 1.) Are 
your bodies subdued — " Neither yield ye your 
members as instruments of iniquity unto sin, but 
present yourselves to God, as those that are alive 
from the dead." Do your passions still hold the 
mastery over you? Have you not banished faith, 
your rightful sovereign, and abolished the empire 
of grace reared in your soul by the power of 
baptism ? — " Know you not that all we who are 
baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in His 
death?" On that day we all welcomed Christ to 
our hearts. The powers of evil had been de- 
throned and driven out from us, and the reign of 
grace solemnly inaugurated — " So do you also 
reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, 
but alive to God in Christ Jesus, Our Lord." 
(Romans, vi, 11.) Is your every appetite 



268 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

brought under the sway of faith and the govern- 
ment of grace? 

On the threshold of our reason our noble 
Christian mothers greeted us with the Catechism 
in their hands. Who made you? God. Why 
did God make you? That I might know Him, 
love Him, and serve Him in this world, and by 
so doing be forever happy with Him in the next. 
This was our answer. The highest, the one 
necessary knowledge and study of our life is to 
know God and Jesus Christ — " That the God of 
Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may 
give to you the spirit of wisdom and of revela- 
tion in the knowledge of Him." (Ephesians, 
117.) But this is not to be a barren knowledge, 
but rather one to apply — ' and serve Him in this 
world.' We cannot serve two Masters. Are we 
the servants of God in our bodies — " Know you 
not that to whom you yield yourselves servants 
to obey, his servants you are whom you obey, 
whether it be of sin unto death, or obedience 
unto justice." (Romans, vi, 16.) Does the 
law of sin prevail in your bodily life? Does 
passion, even when it swoops down upon 
the soul, like a fierce whirlwind, overthrow 
and sweep away the grace of God from your 
hearts? — "Let not sin, therefore, reign in your 
mortal body so as to obey the lusts thereof." 
(Romans, vi, 12.) There can be no fellowship 
of light with darkness, there can be no com- 
promise of grace with sin, there can be no 
joint brotherhood, no oligarchy. The soul is 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 269 

a kingdom, one God, one Lord, one King, one 
Shepherd. 

What say your consciences? Do they reply in 
virtuous, calm and confident accents that you 
have copied Jesus Christ, your Model, in your 
bodily life? Has unhallowed lust burned the 
soul as in a hot furnace? Has brutish intemper- 
ance, or swinish gluttony, or any other human 
passion ruled you? — "As you have yielded your 
members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto 
iniquity, so now yield your members to serve 
Justice unto sanctification." (Romans, vi, 19.) 
This clear, white marble purity of their moral 
statue in his predestinated appeared to the eyes 
of God before the Ages : " As He hath chosen 
us in Him before the foundation of the world 
that we should be holy and unspotted in His 
sight in charity." (Ephesians, 1.) 

" Two things," remarked St. Augustine, " take 
place beyond this world, and these two things we 
cannot know : election before this world and 
glory after it. Two things occur within the con- 
fines of it which we should all know : God calls 
us out from the world and justifies us in it." 
This confirms what we have been saying. We 
may ascertain from the test the first sign of pre- 
destination : are we of this world ? Do we satisfy 
each natural wish of the body? Do we pamper 
every earthly desire, satisfy every earthly craving, 
and feel no bondage of Christ's laws? Do we 
feel the restraints of our holy religion, its per- 
sistent censorship on our morals, its constant 



2^0 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

inhibitions, its unceasing, unending taunting, — 
the curb and bit fastened upon our natural liber- 
ties? Living here below with the feelings and 
laws of a nature, alas ! so human, have we indeed 
the Christian courage and bold resolves to set 
aside all these, and follow in the higher, nobler, 
and purer set of principles of another kingdom, 
• — the kingdom of God, in which continency and 
temperance are loved, respected and observed, as 
laws? — Thy kingdom come! Have you the 
spirit of penance for your sins ; have you the due 
sorrow with the true, unflinching resolve, joined 
to the necessary satisfaction? 

God peers through the vista of ages. The 
images of the elected hosts were distinctly pres- 
ent to His sovereign mind, their number precisely 
reckoned, but only mistily revealed to us w r hen 
the Saviour said : " Many are called, but few are 
chosen." The likeness to Jesus Christ was visible 
on every elected being. Are you among those 
foreseen? Are you of the chosen? Place your 
life side by side with the crucifix and compare. 
Examine yoifr life in the light of Christ's lovely, 
patient, self-denying life. Do you observe the 
Commandments of God? — " If you wish to enter 
into eternal life, keep the Commandments," says 
Our Lord. 

We need not distress ourselves with the affairs 
that belong outside the sphere of this world. 
God placed us here, and here our energies are to 
be centered. The future will harmonize with the 
present life we live, as effect follows its cause, 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 271 

and partakes of its character. Our chief exer- 
cise ought to be thrown upon the important fact 
of a good life, rather than a long life on earth, 
for we know that we certainly cannot be crowned 
unless we shall have sternly and manfully com- 
bated. To dwell in this world and still to be 
subject to the divine laws of Jesus Christ ; to 
be in this world and yet not of it, means a sort 
of exile. There is the loneliness of the desert, 
there is the solitude of the deep, there is the 
solitude of genius, there is the deep solitude of 
virtue, that makes us even in the busy world 
hermits like Anthony and Paul. We are here, 
but our heart is with God. What a Kempis says 
applies to all in a degree : " It is much and very 
much to be able to forego all comfort and be 
willing to bear this interior exile of the heart : " 
for, the heart belongs to God ; the heart must 
love. Do we not give that love which belongs 
to God to another? Christ felt His exile from 
His Father's house — "He began to grow sorrow- 
ful and to be sad." " What ! can you not watch 
one hour with me?" 

There is a sweet loneliness of virtue. For- 
bidden fruits hang about us in all their delicious 
nectarous and downy richness. Nature is drawn 
toward them by her own laws. We walk in a very 
paradise of proscribed pleasures. Nature yearns, 
and never tires of yearning, for false liberty; 
but Reason and Faith keep the savage in prison, 
bound with strong chains. The dreadful loneli- 
ness of virtue will make us moody and sulky, as 



272 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

men, or scorners of our kind, as philosophers ; 
but, done under the sovereign motive of Christ's 
sweet love, our exile loses its bitterness : His 
spirit is ever with us and we surely know that 
our exile will speedily come to an end. From 
the pinnacle of our high hopes we see the sweet 
delights of heaven unfold themselves in inter- 
minable glories of the heart and the mind. 

Do you experience a loneliness when you ob- 
serve those about you living subject to the natural 
laws, subservient to the maxims of this world? 
Our sympathies are not with them ; theirs are not 
with us. Yes, does not your nature crave a holi- 
day, a short respite from the toils of virtue? " I 
am delighted with the law of God according to 
the inward man, but I see another law in my 
members fighting against the law of my mind 
and captivating me in the law of sin." (Romans, 
vii, 27.) But you bear patiently, I know, the 
solitude of your exile. Perhaps to-day, perhaps 
tomorrow, in any case, soon, this valley of tears 
shall fade away from your mortal sight and you 
shall go to your Father's house, set on yonder 
eternal hills, where the light of Christian hope 
so joyously twinkles. 

St. Augustine says God calls us out from this 
world. Does the world discern you as Christians, 
through your aloofness from it, and the variance 
of your maxims from its own? Does the pagan 
world that surrounds you remark upon the stern 
restrictions you lay upon your passions, and the 
resolve you kave made to yourselves that there 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 273 

can be no truce with them? Does the world 
point at each of you and say : Yonder is a fol- 
lower of Christ — from the character of your life, 
your unrelenting antipathy to evil of every kind ? 
Ah, brethren, say rather with many of you, could 
they not exclaim — pooh ! pooh ! these people 
live as we do. Are all our Christian women so 
admirable in their modesty as to shun every sem- 
blance of coquettishness ? Are they so grand and 
loyal in their simplicity and modesty as to force 
a Libanius to exclaim: "The Christians have 
such noble women ! " Is your conversation such 
as to stamp you as Christians, even as Peter's 
speech denoted his association with Christ? 
" Surely thou art also one of them, for even thy 
speech doth discover thee." (Matthew, xxi, 73.) 
Do we not convert the creatures we encounter 
in our life into the end for which we were created? 
Do we not turn this our exile into our true home 
and rob Our Father in heaven, and our true 
home of the affections that belong, above, by 
every right? — "Seek the things that are above." 
We were created for God, but how do you look 
upon death? Is it as the termination of your 
exile? If so, why these lacerations of your feel- 
ings in saying farewell? Surely an exile rejoices 
when he comes within sight of his home. Ah, 
perhaps you are attached to the world. If so, 
you are not an exile in it. You are in the world 
and you are of it. 

But it was not so with the early Christians, our 
honored ancestors. Their beautiful life forced 



274 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

the confession of this truth from pagan lips : 
" The Christians are in the world as the soul in 
the body. The soul is spread throughout all 
the members of the body, and the Christians are 
scattered throughout the villages and cities of the 
world. The soul abides in the body but is not of 
it. Christians dwell in the world but do not 
belong to it." Methinks that many Christians 
of our own day are found in comparison with the 
earlier Christians, as we have already observed, 
to be somewhat like the statues of the first cen- 
turies that had been buried in the earth and 
eventually exhumed only to be brought to the 
surface minus a joint or several joints, or, it may 
be, disfigured beyond all recognition. The Chris- 
tian family likeness has departed from the life 
and character of many who boast the glorious 
and honored name, but the delinquencies of the 
many but serve to make it incumbent upon the 
few to preserve all the better in their own life 
and character the noble ideal. 

A good conscience ranks among the signs of 
election to future glory — a conscience — one that 
bears witness that we have been in earnest, stead- 
fast and sincere in our Christian life, rigid with our 
passions, and unfriendly toward every wrong 
inclination. Are you such a man as pagans and 
heretics would set apart in society as being differ- 
ent to themselves ; one who thinks and acts upon 
principles more exalted than their own ; such a 
one as impresses them and all men with the heav- 
enly dignity and truthfulness of Christianity ; one 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 2*]% 

who in leaving the world's busy scene has left in 
his wake, to the family hearth, in his social life, 
and in his business associations as well, an image 
behind him, a memory that clings? Have you 
spread about you the sweet odors of Jesus Christ 
that will linger in the world for a blessing long 
after you are dead? 

The world gives its mute testimony to the 
happy immortality of a virtuous man. With 
sorrow, brethren, I do feel obliged to make the 
assertion, not indeed by way of criticism, for 
which I entertain a deep dread, but as a charity 
toward you, that multitudes amongst us are 'beat- 
ing the air.' They are found full ready to confess 
glibly enough their firm belief in our hallowed 
religion with their lips, but their actions cannot 
stand up before the bar of their consciences and 
hope for acquittal. The Master was the unrelent- 
ing foe to bodily softness and sensuous indul- 
gences, from the grotto to the cross. And what,, 
with fasts, vigils, and unceasing labors, His whole 
life was truly what Kempis characterized it, 'a 
cross and martyrdom.' Many of His adherents,, 
— but, only nominally such — choke the mustard 
seed; their lives impede the growth and expan- 
sion of the Church : " Those who lead a bad life,' 
says St. Augustine, "and call themselves Chris- 
tians, do injury to Christ : it may be said of such 
that they blaspheme the name of the Lord." It 
is impossible to calculate the evils resulting from 
the bad Christian life of any individual. A dread- 
ful responsibility rests upon our life : the world 



276 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

will judge our religion through us — by the fruits 
you shall know the tree. 

How many of our young Christian women, 
driven by harsh conditions from their native land, 
take up the humble duties of domestics in foreign 
lands — in America, or Australia, and by their 
truly Christian lives, so redolent of the early ages 
of Christian chivalry, teach society what it is to be 
a Christian. Their honest, sincere trust, and 
humble Catholic life does its silent missionary 
work long perhaps after these noble Irish women 
have gone home to their Father in heaven. Many 
a man in the higher grade of social life has traced 
his conversion to our noble faith back to the 
prayers and example of one or more of these 
virtuous women. He recalls their footsteps heard 
as they emerged before the break of day from the 
home of their Master, in all seasons and weather, 
to assist at Mass. He brings back their modesty, 
their patience, their truth and honesty, humility, 
and sweet charity. The lives of such women are 
for building up God's house, which the young 
men of the period, hosts of indifferent parents 
and fashion-adoring women conspire to tear 
down. 

The piety that lets the passions rule is false ; 
that which seeks to compromise with them, is 
soothing but deceptive. 

Behold then, the dead Christ ! His rapturous 
form rests on the easel of the Cross — your Model. 
He died for all men : all I say, then, are sculptors 
who had laid upon them the exalted, long, ardu- 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 277 

ous task of reproducing in their own lives the 
external beauties of the Master's, combined with 
the internal character of His matchless interior 
life. The crucifixion is the epitome of the 
Saviour's life; here we shall find all. The piety 
that connives at untamed senses is perfidious. In, 
then, to your flesh let the chisel sink under a 
hammer swung with the vigor of sternest resolve 
and the steadfast will to cut away from all vice, to 
break with all impious association, to sever all 
that Heaven might behold with a disapproving eye. 
Be the centurion with your passions, — "I say to 
this one go and he goeth." God calls us — let us 
go out from this world. Wrapt in the foul and 
-dense mists of your lower impulses, all bodily like- 
ness to Jesus Christ is imperceptible to God and 
to your fellows. Cast aside these hampering 
indulgences, and let your corporal life step forth 
from the clay, revealing to angels and men the 
naked, chaste beauty of Christ's own incorruptible 
life. Unclothed of his passions, the Christian 
sculptor's work has begun ; aye, more — advanced 
a stride, though the outlines of Christ are as yet 
but rough. Our likeness to the Divine Model is 
but remote; and yet it is some resemblance, and 
the least that any man may hold up for a sign of 
his election — the faintest token that he is of the 
family of Christ. 

All are not called upon to reproduce the lights 
and shades of the Master's life, and to develop 
that finest resemblance to Him that is the very 
essence of the monastic life, where the evangeli- 



278 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

cal counsels flourish. Here we are beyond the 
Commandments. Each one, however, in his par- 
ticular station copies Christ when he performs his 
duty according to that state in which God has 
placed him. Were the Master in your stead, how 
would He act in your station? Do likewise. 

Ask yourselves if your piety be not little less 
than ceremonial. Is it enough, then, to assist at 
the Holy Sacrifice — to mumble, periodically r 
formulas of prayer in the most perfunctory fash- 
ion? Is your piety deep enough? Does your 
zeal reach down to your prevailing passion armed 
with the determination to defy and subdue it? 
''This is My Body," said Christ, — the Body He 
made subject to the laws of Divinity, and eventu- 
ally surrendered to the Father in a violent death. 
Look at your bodily life : look up into the face 
of Heaven and make Christ's words your own : 
This is my body that I have brought to subjec- 
tion in imitation of my Master and Model. Do 
you speak the truth? Do you lie? — "And they 
who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with 
the vices and concupiscences." (Gal.v, 24.) How 
many do this? Count them, and you will approx- 
imate to the number of the predestinated. Has 
Christ made a new set of rules for moderns ? In 
North America and in South, in Europe and 
in India, — * all nations to the consummation of 
the world,' 'what I say to you I say to all ' — 'one 
faith' — "If any man will come after Me let 
him take up his cross and follow Me." To con- 
quer our passions is our earliest work ; this con- 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 279- 

stitutes our external likeness to Jesus Christ, and 
a dawning forecast of election to glory. 

Now, our Lord and Saviour was not mere clay, 
but a living man — God. Our imitation of Him 
in His bodily life is necessary. When we have 
overthrown the dominion of passion we are, how- 
ever, only in the vestibule, and but ready to pass 
beyond to the inner temple of the Lord's admirable 
character. Here we find the atmosphere sweet- 
ened with frankincense, and the adoring air gently 
but surely instilling into all the fibres of our being 
the consciousness of the truth that man was made 
to adore and serve God, that the capital sign of 
predestination is, without any shadow of doubt,. 
humility. This is the foundation of all religion, 
and all virtues. Lucifer's motto, boldly written,, 
reads thus : "I shall not serve." Christ's standard 
bore the words : " Thy will be done." As Cath- 
olics, our hopes are golden — Thank God we have 
not protested against authority. When the tidal 
wave of religious rebellion swept away kingdoms 
from the Faith, our fathers clung to the masts of 
Peter's bark. 

But our interior likeness to Christ brings our 
election beyond the province of the probabilities 
on to the realms of human certainty. We must 
copy the soul of Christ — His motives, sentiments,, 
affections, dispositions and virtues. Amongst 
these interior features of the Master's life His 
overwhelming and deathless love for all men was 
a shining characteristic. The thirst that pained 
Him on the Cross was not so much the physical. 



280 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

drought that parched His sweet lips and tongue 
as that interior thirst after the love of mankind 
— that made His soul like a fair land without 
water. " Of what use is My Blood? " gasped the 
Lord, in the throes of His bitter passion, as David 
tells us. We must have love for our brethren, 
because they are all God's children, and the 
^brethren of the Lord — kind words and actions, 
acts of beneficence, sunny thoughts of them, and 
help for them in the distresses of body and of 
soul. This charity is so lacking in the make-up 
of the rich that Our Lord has Himself declared 
how hard it is for the opulent to find salvation : — 
"Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall 
hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matt., 
xix, 23.) "And again, I say unto you, that it is 
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a 
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of heaven." (Matt., xix, 24.) We should have affec- 
tion for our brethren for God's sake. The affluent 
liave not this sign of predestination unless they 
strive to fulfil their duties to God's needy children. 
— " In this we know the charity of God, because 
He hath laid down His life for us, and we ought 
to lay down our lives for the brethren. He that 
iiath the substance of this world and shall see his 
brother in need and shall shut up his bowels on 
Him : now, doth the charity of God abide in 
liim?" (1 John, iii, 16-17.) The First Epistle of 
St. John then clearly, directly and forcibly brands 
■the uncharitable rich, and all others who have not 
charity for their brethren, with the mark of repro- 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 28l w 

bation : " My children, let us not love in word 
nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth." (i John, 
iii, 1 8.) It was under the momentum of the 
supposition that the sweet precept of charity 
would be accomplished toward our fellows, that 
the Apostle of love was inspired to say: " Dearly 
beloved, we are now the sons of God. We know 
that when He shall appear we shall be like to Him, 
because we shall see Him as He is." (i John,, 
iii, 2.) The hearts of the rich are as hard as 
the metal they worship, and their hearts will 
never melt in sympathy until the metal shall melt 
and flow out from their hands, into the hungry 
jaws and parched throats of the starving. I 
repeat, however, the mark by excellence of the 
elected of God is humility. Our Lady's canticle, 
thrice dearer to us than David's rapturous lays, 
for we know our Mother's graceful lips and soft 
voice sung it, tells the story of predestination ; 
" My spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour, 
because He hath regarded the humility of His 
handmaid ; He hath put down the mighty from 
their seat, and hath exalted the humble." " I . 
have chosen to be an abject in the House of 
God," said Jesus, by the mouth of His prophetic 
grandsire. "Cultivate humility and you will 
never be entrapped by the devil," remarked St. 
Ephraim. The world resists the haughty and 
self-opinionated : there is an intrinsic repulsive- 
ness felt by mankind toward the spirit of ar- 
rogance. The world predicts ruin upon the 
proud, even in this world. 



282 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

" Pride goeth before a fall," is a familiar saw- 
*' God resists the proud, but gives grace to the 
humble," says the prophet. Jesus confirms the 
truth when He said: " He that exalteth himself 
shall be humbled," and when again He says : 
*< Learn of Me, because I am meek and humble 
of heart." "As one cannot take a draught from 
Nature's founts unless he stoop, bending down- 
ward, it is equally impossible to drink of the 
living fountain of Christ and the pure stream of 
the Holy Spirit unless we stoop in true humility," 
says St. Csesar of Aries. 

It may be said that the most certain sign of 
one's predestination is his humility. It has been 
observed that our Lady had a greater need of 
this virtue than the saints, because, whereas she 
was a creature, God lifted her for all, to such 
tremendous heights of character and dignity. 
With pride, the current of ruin took its rise, in 
the bosom of an angel. An angel of darkness 
brought the germ of it to earth. The harlot 
will find easier salvation than the Pharisee. Pride 
is the greatest danger that threatens mankind. 
No place on earth is free from it, and, strange as 
it may sound, the holiest people are the most 
imperilled by it. It is the most difficult task 
falling within the scope of man's lot to possess 
all other virtues in an eminent degree, and still 
remain truly humble. The proof of this asser- 
tion lies in the comparatively! small number of 
the canonized saints. If God has placed us in 
the lesser spheres of life, we should be slow to 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 283 

grumble, for we shall enjoy a greater likelihood 
of being humble, and the farther removed from 
the terrible danger of self-esteem and self- 
adulation. Our sins do not deter us from salva- 
tion, when we rise out of them more humble : 
" A contrite and humble heart Thou wilt not 
despise," said David to the Lord. God suffers 
men to fall in order to stem the torrent of their 
haughty pride. " God with the same blow struck 
down Saul and raised up Paul ; struck down the 
-proud man and raised up the humble man," says 
St. Augustine. God suffered the lapse of Peter : 
His design in such a -permission was to tame the 
Apostle's high spirit. Sin humbles man. What- 
ever reminds him of his weakness causes him 
distress. Before the denial of his Master, Peter 
had been a boaster : he rose from his sad fall an 
humble man, a saint — predestinated. I have 
said, and now repeat, that we must control all our 
evil impulses, but ' all things work together for our 
salvation/ and if one fall occasionally, by hum- 
bling himself he sucks the serpent's poison from 
his veins. If you rise up from your sin w r ith a 
taint on your modesty or sobriety, you may more 
than repair your error by showing an increase in 
your humility. Let us cultivate then, above all^ 
the spirit of humility. Obedience to Christ, in His 
Church and precepts — and for religious to His 
counsels, — is the highest summit of this wondrous 
virtue, to which we must at any cost endeavor to 
attain. When we shall have attained to a per- 
fect humility of mind in faith and of heart in a 



284 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

blameless moral life, united with Christ to our 
fellow-men, with both hands we shall clutch the 
key to the kingdom of heaven, and may take to 
ourselves, without arrogance or delusion, the 
words of the Lord : " This day thou shalt be 
with me in Paradise." Ah, Jesus, Son of David ! 
So be it. So be it. 

But these glorious marks of the chosen ones 
of God are not attained to without suffering, — - 
" For unto this you have been called: because 
Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an exam- 
ple, that you should follow His steps." (1 Peter 
ii, 21.) Those little works of domestic embroidery 
that bedecked the walls and hung upon the 
lounges and easy chairs in our humble Christian 
homes are not, then, vain ornaments nor even 
mere preservatives against the gloss or stain of 
the satin or plush or morocco beneath them. 
How often our prudent mothers — peace to their 
ashes — have chosen this means of attuning, from 
the first, our senses and memories to the capital 
principles of the faith. Perhaps in point of exe- 
cution there was not the touch of the artist in 
them, but the conception was incomparable ; and 
if, in the former instance, there was not the art, 
there was more — there was piety and the touch 
of our mother's hand. 'No cross, no crown.' I 
look back and see the device, like a coat-of-arms 9 
wrought upon the upholstery in the palaces of 
princes. It is the motto symbolizing Our Divine 
Ancestor's life and principle, and a steady re- 
minder to us, the children of Jesus Christ, of the 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 285 

principles that should govern, and in governing, 
truly ornament our life. 

Ave Crux ! There is no exception to the law 
of suffering — " And all who will live piously in 
Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Tim. 
iii, 12.) The world, the flesh, and the devil will 
antagonize us bitterly and to the end, but we 
must hew down these giant enemies. Upon the 
assurance of St. Chrysostom, we may well believe 
that the demon is never so wroth and fierce as 
when he confronts a life being lived in faithful 
conformity with the holy teachings of the Gospel. 
He does not trouble his friends on earth. The 
measure of our suffering is the measure of our 
certitude of election to future glory. Suffering, 
then, is not to be regarded by Christian men as 
an ordeal unnecessary, a bore, — something to 
be gotten rid of as speedily as possible, and the 
sooner all the more gain for us. This view of 
suffering becomes a pagan, but it sits unhand- 
somely on a Christian man, a follower of Christ. 
It was along this line that the Master spoke of 
His design on St. Paul to the Ananias at Damas- 
cus — "This man is a vessel of election to Me, to 
carry My Name before the Gentiles, and kings, 
and the children of Israel. For I will show him 
how great things he must stiffer for the sake of 
My Name." (Acts ix, 15, 16.) St. Paul himself 
teaches that suffering is a gift of God quite as 
well as the faith, and therefore a grace — some- 
thing we should be rejoiced to possess and thank- 
ful at receiving: " To you it is given from Christ, 



2 86 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for 
His sake." (Philippians i, 29.) What, that we 
are to look for and urged to accept the sufferings 
of St. Paul? — Aye. Ah, but this is something 
new! Oh, no. So the Apostle has always 
taught: " Having the same conflict as that which 
you have seen in me always, and now have 
heard of me." (v. 30.) 

A life free of sufferings makes a bad hand of 
salvation. — "All they who have pleased the 
Lord have passed through many tribulations." 
(Judith.) 

A smooth life is suspicious, from a Christian 
point of view ; for, sometimes God pays in this 
way the reward of what little good we do. 
When, then, we come to die, we shall have had 
our reward and can find no recompense awaiting 
us hereafter — "Blessed are they that mourn." 

The great doctors of the Church have expressed 
themselves distinctly on this point. St. Augustine 
says : " When God chastises you heavily this is 
looked upon as a sign that He has destined you 
to the ranks of the chosen." (Epist. : ad Alip.) 
St. Lawrence Justinian adds: "To suffer and be 
patient under the lash is looked upon as being 
beyond doubt a presage of predestination." (De 
Cesto Connubio, c, xix.) St. Gregory says : " We 
recognize the chosen under a life of piety, lived out 
through harsh sufferings. Suffering is the daily 
food of the chosen." Let, then, the poor, the 
sick, the lame, the blind and above all the afflicted 
of soul who unite a good life to their sorrows 



AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 287 

thank God for the sure mark that God has 
assigned them to the roll of the chosen ones. 
Such merit our congratulation and not our con- 
dolence. Let them not beg their release, but 
patience to endure all. 

Tribulation is the soul of virtue. There can 
be no virtue where there is no willingness to 
sacrifice our own will and pleasure. " Heirs 
indeed of God," says St. John, "and joint heirs 
with Christ, yet so, if we suffer with Him that 
also we may be glorified with Him." Brethren, 
let us set aside the past and forget the Lord's 
prophecy. Let us be good in future, and humble 
ourselves always ; let us henceforth love one 
another and suffer patiently; and, notwithstanding 
Our Lord's prophecy, we shall all of us be chosen 
and not one of us be lost. Our dear Lord wishes 
this. He is with us. — ' Behold, I am with you 
all days.' — Our Heavenly Mother is by our side. 
Those who struggled like us and who now dwell 
in the land of light and peace — the saints of God 
and the great armies of angels are all for us. We 
have the sacraments of the Lord and the omnipo- 
tence of prayer for unfailing weapons. Jesus is 
gentle, merciful, only let us strive. If we do our 
feeble best the Master will do the rest. — The 
Rabbi knoweth our frame and that we are weak. — 
He will consider all this. — Go to Him when you 
are tired and sad. Tell Him your heart. Weep 
with love upon His merciful bosom. Give Him 
your full confidence and as He was true to His 
Father, He will be faithful to you — "Come to 



288 AM I OF THE CHOSEN. 

Me all ye that are heavily burdened and I will 
refresh you." There, leaning against the gate of 
the Heart of Jesus, you will ask the question : 
Am I of the chosen? And the answer will come 
forth softer than the cooing of the turtle-dove, 
sweeter than the note of the mavis, lower than 
the music of the mountain rill: "You have not 
chosen Me, but I have chosen you." 



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